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DRAKE AND THE 
ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Usabel Ibornibrool? 


DRAKE OF TROOP ONE 
SCOUT DRAKE IN WAR TIME 
COXSWAIN DRAKE OF THE SEASCOUTS 
PEMROSE LORRY; CAMP FIRE GIRL 
DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 



V. 



The canoe went ov^er the ridge, riding the shaggy 
COMBER. Frontispiece. See page i68. 


■'drake and the 

ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


BY 

ISABEL HORNIBROOK 

w 

With Illustrations by 
Sears Gallagher ^ 


IKqN’REFERT 

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BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY 
1922 







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Copyright, tQ22, 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 


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/111 rights reserved 
PubTshed April, 1922 

i 



Printed in the United States of America. 


wav -3 1922 

g)C!.A659923 ^ 





ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


The author offers the homage of her pro- 
found indebtedness to Frederick Hedge 
Kennard Esq., sportsman and ornithologist, 
for permission to use his notes made at the 
heart of the Big Cypress, where so rarely the 
foot of white man has trodden, and probably 
never that of white boy. 

She also acknowledges her debt to the 
Reverend Lucian A. Spencer, United States 
Agent to the Seminole Indians. 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Left Behind 3 

II Buddy 17 

III Sons of Rest 29 

IV A Chance 48 

V Room-Mates 55 

VI Sanctuary 67 

VII A New Bird 80 

VIII Feathers 87 

IX The Sand-Sailer 103 

X The Loon Procession 120 

XI A Beach Barbecue 127 

XII The Challenge 142 

XIII A Puny Navy 153 

XIV Rough Riders 161 

XV A Clown-Bird 177 

XVI The Egg-Eater 184 

XVII A Demon Hazer 199 

XVIII A Strolling Razor-Back .... 207 

XIX The ’Gator Hunt 223 

XX Indian Potato Slough 234 

XXI Little Tiger 242 

XXI I A Slim-Witch 251 


X 


CONTENTS 


XXIII The Chiefs 260 

XXIV The Motto in Seminole .... 265 

XXV The Mad King 277 

XXVI A Grim Surprise Party .... 290 

XXVII The Lion’s Prize 298 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The canoe went over the ridge, riding the shaggy 


comber Frontispiece 

PAGE 

“Turtle! Big tur-tle — ahead!’* 109 

Among the swarming ground-nests . . . . 179 

The mad naturalist was actually driving the 
panther off 279 



DRAKE AND THE 
ADVENTURERS’ CUP 









CHAPTER I 


Left Behind 

T he sun was lifting a pink eyelid from an 
eyeball of red. 

The cypress dipped its gray hoof in the 
orange-colored swamp. 

The boy stood, lonely as a catamount, 
amid a ghostly dance of fluttering air-plants 
flimsily draping the trees around him — so 
that they loomed, forbidding, phantom-like, 
in the early light. 

“My wor-rd 1 but this is a queer 'hangout*,” 
he murmured wildly, glancing from the bright 
yellow ochre of the swamp at his feet — sun- 
shot here and there until it bled — up to the 
gray curtain of Spanish moss that wrapped 
the shivering cypress. 

From head to cloven hoof, too, each brother 
cypress-tree was wrapped in the same pale 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


parasite until the little wood became a grove 
of ghosts whose novelty might well set a 
castaway’s wits to wool-gathering — so that 
the wool stopped his ears and he could scarcely 
hear his own awed whisper. 

“A — a mighty queer — ‘hangout’ !” he 
repeated breathlessly. “Gee! I har-rdly 
dare pinch myself. Am I — am I, really, 
Neff Hare, ‘Cotton-top,’ as Dyke — ‘Unc” 
— calls me, dropped — dropped here at day- 
break, left behind by a train when it stopped 
for orders, because I raced down the old em- 
bankment there, to stretch my legs, cramped 
from sitting up all night in a day-coach — 
and to get a look at a strange bird, with a 
face and legs as orange as the swamp ?” 

The waifs eyes turned reproachfully now 
towards the brown ridge of the railroad 
embankment, looming not an eighth of a mile 
distant. 

“Left behind!” he moaned inwardly. 
“Left behind with Dyke, my only pal, wag- 
ging a finger at me from the train-steps, 
telling me — telling me to stay up — not to 
do anything that he would n’t do ! Wow-ow !” 

A yellow grin — reflection of the saffron 


LEFT BEHIND 


swamp — twisted the waif s lips sarcastically 
now. 

“Well-11! there's one thing he won't do-o, 
unless I miss my guess," he confided to a 
gray beard of the Spanish moss which swept 
his face. “He won't put himself out to pick 
me up again — make any arrangements for 
me to follow him — although he did pay for 
my ticket to some place down south in 
Florida, where he said the hunting was good — 
sport dandy 1 Something to do with feathers 
— some sort o' daring ‘ plumer's ' game, I 

I 

guess 1 

The boy paused, paused in his own half- 
muttered reflection, to watch a heron casting 
a reflection upon the glossy surface of the 
swamp. 

In the silence a Florida yellow-throat and a 
nearby cardinal bird began singing together, 
a duet which, momentarily, streaked his face 
with radiance. Then thought reverted to 
his own plight. 

“But I knew — I knew from the moment 
that Dyke — Dyke with whom I ran away 
from that Dutchy farmer a year ago — got 
friendly with another man on the train, queer 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


black-haired guy, with a jaw that stuck out, 
and they were whispering together, as pals, 
half the night, that — that he wanted to 
get rid of me/e The waif was whispering on 
his own behalf now to the gray beards above 
him. — I pretended to be asleep, but I 
heard him ‘chinning ^ with this new ‘ cahoot ’ 
about a place, a channel — water, I guess — 
that was a fly-way for rare birds an* about — 
gee ! yes, then a re-al ‘ screamer,' some o' 
which he had got off before to me, about, 
maybe^ plucking some r-rich quills f om a 
wild-goose chase down there — about a story 
that might be strange — stranger than ‘The 
Wild Eye Of Grit' ! . . . Dyke was always 
a movie fan." 

The boy, Neff, was a movie fiend too; 
the contrast between the ragged gray curtain 
of Spanish moss before him, and the brightly 
painted screen of a Moving Picture Palace 
was so blighting that for a moment he had 
hard work to stay up. 

“ Dyke was grinnin' as if he 'd grin the 
paint off the seat when he got off that 
‘screamer,'" he told himself presently. “I 
had my head down, my arm 'cross my face. 


LEFT BEHIND 


but I was watching him — watching him out 
of the corner of my eye. Yes! an' the other 
guy, too, the queer ‘ jimberjawed' fellow; and 
I saw him look at me an' say, ‘Why — why 
bring the kid into it, at all?’ And then — 
and then something about a ‘grab game' an' 
settling the old 'gator with a blue pill 1 Wow! 
I wonder what they were talking about ? 
But — but, after that" — forlornly — “Dyke 
looked as if he 'd crawl through a crack to get 
rid of me. He might n't have tried it here, 
only — only that I queered myself!" 

There was a shiver — a sob — in the mur- 
mur now. Not all the whistling sweetness 
of the cardinal's song could drown it — 
although it rainbowed the desolation. 

“ But if only I 'd been dropped where a 
fellow would have a show ; a — a chance to 
pick himself up again," gasped Neff suddenly 
— passionately — aloud. “ Gee ! talk of a 
hundred miles from nowhere. I 've sure landed 
r-right on the spot," with a freakish grin. 
“Nothing in sight but one darky's shanty, a 
few wild pigs — and turkey buzzards that 
would be glad of a chance to gobble me!" 

From that dark and sinister buzzard-flock 


[7l 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


roosting, vulture-like, upon a neighboring 
sapling, the waifs eye presently turned to his 
own reflection in the southern swamp. 

“Wow! I do look tempting,'' he told 
himself, “for all the world like one of those 
blowzy labels on a California fruit-can," 
pufling out his cheeks the better to admire 
them in the high glaze of the vivid mud, of 
the same tint and consistency that a painter 
might have used if he had mixed yellow ochre 
and madder color together, to paint him upon 
the morning's canvas — a lonely waif. 

Yet — yet not quite so much alone as he 
thought 1 

He jumped two feet as, from somewhere, 
a loud-mouthed bawl darkly streaked the 
silence about him. 

“Man!" it gobbled angrily. “Man! ef-f 
I cud on’y kotch de guy w'at — w'at set dat 
he-goat a-shambling, I suah hit him so har-rd 
I jar-r his awncestor' — golly, yes!" 

“Wow! You can't jar mine. I haven’t 
any to jar. No an-ces-tors that ever I 
heard of!" Neff* shrank, chuckling, behind 
a tree. 

“I — I hit him so-o hard dat, ef he no fall 

[81 


LEFT BEHIND 


down, he — suah — do some funny thng, 
standing up !'* 

“Ha ! I *m doing that now — listening to 
you. Wow! but this is ‘keen.^’’ 

The boy — the waif — had a distracting 
vision now of a fist, black as ebony, shaken 
in the face of the veiled cypress-lady behind 
whom he hid, of wild eyes rolling — rolling — 
with enough white to paint a poster, it seemed 
— of the wave of a patchwork shirt. 

Forgotten on the instant were hunger and 
desertion ! Nothing — nothing lived for that 
waif but the laugh in the situation — leaving 
him as it found him, elfishly impenitent over 
the fact that it was he who, in the first frenzy 
of fear and freedom following upon the 
discovery that he had been left behind, had 
worked some of it off upon the drowsy billy- 
goat 1 

With the result that the latter, declaring 
for independence too, had snapped its tether, 
chased him up a tree and was now roaming 
the marsh, with the deer and the razor-back 
hogs. 

“Whew 1 but this is keen — awful ‘canny,’ 
he murmured — his own eyes wildly dancing. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

Possessed, all at once, by the kinky spirit 
of prank, he proceeded to make them wilder 
still. Stooping to the bright mud at his feet, 
dipping a forefinger in it, he traced brassy rings 
around them, sprinkled with gold coins his 
puffed out cheeks — and with the finger curv- 
ing, a bright orange horn, from the middle of 
his forehead, suddenly thrust his face out 
upon the mouthing darky. 

“Wah-hoo! Wah-hoo! Boo-hoo ! The — 
black goat has no hear-rt !*' he crowed. 

“Oh! my gr-reat Lawd o' mussy!" The 
threatening negro form fell back. “ Laws — 
laws-a-mussy 1 be you-ou a boy-buckra — or 
be-e you de — dat ole In-ki-bink hisse'f?" 

“I'm the In-ki-bink! Tiga ! Tiga ! I 
tell you the black goat has no heart," droned 
the boy-buffoon, weaving the spell of his evil 
eye on either side of the gray cypress-trunk — 
his form still hidden. 

“Oh ! Juba. Juba ! Look w'ere I 'se at !" 

The darky dropped readily upon a stump. 

Into his widely rolling calf-eyes leaped sud- 
denly a wild, pickaninny glamor of make- 
believe that would have been glad — glad to 
find the flame-horned dragon of his old 


LEFT BEHIND 


mammy’s tales peeping out at him, from this 
bogy swamp. 

“Be-e you — ” he was beginning flightily 
again — 

But, alas ! daylight in the twentieth century 
has no room for a deev — even “ a hundred 
miles from nowhere.” 

“Hey! you Bill Will’am, w’at you doin’ 
there, you lazy suction man ? W’at you 
s’pose dem railroad folks payin’ you forre — 
foolin’ wit’ a Cotton-head, eh?” 

It was a woman’s shrill voice, suddenly 
challenging from beyond the swamp. 

The colored section man, railroad employee, 
started up. 

“ I ’se not wastin’ time, gal,” he protested, 
lamely. “I ’se on my way.” 

“You is; is you? You ’se not ’fraid o’ 
wor-rk, you no ’count track walker — you 
jest sets right down a-side of it!” hooted 
Chloe’s voice again. 

“Gee! I wouldn’t sit down lazily beside 
it — any job she gave me — I ’d pitch right 
in an’ work my head off, if only she ’d 
give me something to eat, in return,” mut- 
tered the famished waif, his eyes seeking 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


out between the trees the portly figure of the 
chiding negress. ‘‘No — no ‘diner' for us on 
the train last night ! Just a ham sandwich 
and an apple for me ! ' Wonder — wonder 
if Dyke remembers ? Wow ! 't would be heads 
or tails with him whether I stay up or starve." 

It was a bright, man-hating dagger of 
misery that flashed now in the boyish eyes 
turned towards Chloe — who was admiring 
her turbaned head in a pool — while her 
chidden “suction man" rolled up the em- 
bankment, crooning : 

“ I ’se ben wukking on de railroad, 

All-11 de lib-long day-ay, 

I ’se ben wukking on dat railroad, 

Jes’ to pass de time away-ay! ” 

Perhaps it was to further pass the time 
away that he entered a gray shanty by the 
track, once a watchman's shanty, now a tool- 
shed, beside which flamed something that — 
as NeflF's eyes followed him — quenched the 
bitterness in them, the forsaken bitterness, 
turned the morning a little rose-colored again. 

It was the pink glory of a rich red-bud, or 
Judas tree, already, in February, in full 
bloom. ' 


LEFT BEHIND 


Cheered into believing that there might be 
some red-letter luck ahead of him, he turned 
hopefully towards Chloe — but of a sudden, 
her gay, calicoed figure danced — danced like 
a harlequin before his eyes. 

Out of the distance came a rumble. 

And the boy’s heart scurried in his breast 
more wildly than did the startled hare, at that 
moment painting its pats in the edge of the 
swamp. 

It was the practical, every-day rumble of an 
approaching train ! 

Around a distant bend it hove in sight, the 
thundering Titan of the engine, closely fol- 
lowed by two sun-kissed baggage cars — then 
by a long string of day-coaches and brightly 
varnished Pullmans. 

The sight of it, the sound of it, rubbed 
corners off the boy’s hunger. 

Backward — backward he turned and raced 
with it — ahead of it — towards the point at 
which he had been dropped. 

The flush of a wild idea, a desperate hope, 
was on his gasping clown’s face. Like a 
Jonathan Wild it rode him — regardless of his 
make-up ! 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


The last train had stopped here, stopped for 
twenty minutes for despatch orders. Per- 
haps this flyer would do so too. 

Then — then, if he told his story to the 
conductor, while its truth was still red-hot, 
surely the train-men, somebody, would have 
mercy on him, pick him up and carry him on. 

“If not — if not to that place down south 
for which my ticket was taken, at least some- 
where — anywhere — out of this wilderness, 
lonely as old Sarum he told himself. 

But his heart was presently in his flying 
soles. He was treading on it — trampling 
on it ! For the special showed no signs of 
slowing up. 

On — on it came, in full feather, full speed, 
in the direction of the gray shanty, with the 
flame of the flowering red-bud, candle-like, 
beside it. 

Brighter blazed that Judas tree before the 
boy’s swimming sight. There came a moment 
when, its fragrant pink deepening, it seamed 
the embankment as with a blood-red scar, to his 
hopeless gaze. 

And — and out of that moment reeled a 
shock ! Out of that moment came a crash 


LEFT BEHIND 


that knocked the roof off the world, as it 
seemed, leaving the earth a lidless wreck, 
where still the Judas tree flamed on — treach- 
ery’s torch ! 

‘‘Wow! Some-thing registered that time,” 
faltered the waif, suddenly crippled in his 
tracks. “ Reg-is-tered ! ’ ' 

The feeble word was registering a horror in 
his own addled brain, never — never to be 
forgotten. 

Down the steep embankment before him 
was tearing, pitching, plowing a maddened, 
derailed Titan engine, knocking spots of? Crea- 
tion before his dazzled eyes. 

“Jerry rode it! Old — Nick — rode it,” 
jabbered the waif of the by-ways deliriously 
as — with earthquake rumblings — it rolled 
upon its side ; and the blood-shot swamp be- 
hind him trembled at the sight. 

Two giddy baggage cars, plunging, break- 
neck, too, almost piled themselves on top 
of it. 

He had a raving vision of a foremost Pull- 
man trying to kick up its heels as well, hang- 
ing half over the embankment’s edge, of chips 
and pale glass flying in gimcrack horror — of 

[15I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


the whole train tottering and sidling upon the 
crumbling brink. 

“Jerry — rode — it!” And then the waif, 
in his madness, became aware that Jerry, 
charging, had ridden down something. 

The Judas tree was no more. At the mo- 
ment when the train struck treachery in the 
shape of a splintered rail where the broken 
rail-top still remained in place in a way to 
bafhe even the examining eye of a section 
man, the radiant pink blossoms had been 
trampled and strewn. 

A light had gone out. It went out in the 
castaway’s heart, too, as he realized that the 
gray shanty beside it into which Chloe’s “suc- 
tion man” had disappeared, two minutes be- 
fore, had been struck and shattered, also. 

“It — it ’s over ev-ery-thing — the wreck 1 
W-worst thing I ever saw 1 Worst I — ever — 
could see!” he gibbered faintly, feeling as if 
the bolt had struck him upstairs, in his 
turned-round brain and palsied for ever his 
“Jerry” tongue. 


CHAPTER II 


Buddy 

J UST at what point the groaning horror 
yawned and gave forth, that waif, watch- 
ing, could not tell ! 

But — but, fructifying quickly, it gave 
birth to Boys. Boys by the dozen ! By the 
score ! 

To be sure, they were only the right wing of 
a swarm, but, like the wreck, they seemed to 
be over everything — especially the boys in 
khaki — in their zeal to take the reins from 
Jerry, demon of disaster, and right, as far as 
might be, the mischief he had wrought. 

“Scouts ! Scouts stay up — and go to it 
Neff heard a ringing voice give forth. “Help 
get the passengers out of that forward Pullman 
where they must be standing on their heads ! 
Never mind cuts and bruises ! . . . Snap to !*' 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


And with one glance at the speaker, their 
leader, whose khaki was blood-stained as he 
knelt by a dying fireman who had jumped 
when Jerry rode — another at an older, dig- 
nified figure, the frost of whose little goatee 
was, also, dyed red — they snapped to, those 
sons of succor. 

“Here! you fellows, Deanie and Rev, lend 
me a boost. I ’ll climb into that foremost 
Pullman and try an’ get a door open,” cried a 
boy whose shout, somehow, struck sparks 
from the punk- wood of the waif’s breast — 
the dummy waif whose feet had mechanically 
climbed the embankment. “Colored porter 
must be ‘rocked,’” added the fiery voice. 

“Ha! He’s hot stuff all right, from — 
from his topper down !” said Neff to himself. 

His eyes were on that blazing “topper,” 
a head so red that it shamed the blood upon 
the tall youth’s cheek — so red that it streaked 
horror’s darkness like a fire-ball in a raging 
thunder-shower. 

There was red — red on the breast of his 
khaki coat, too — which had a patrol leader’s 
badge of crimson and gray upon the shoulder 
— as he clambered through the gap of an 


BUDDY 


empty window-frame, spiked with broken 
glass, and into that crazy car. 

“I’m afraid he’ll find that it’s not only 
the porter who’s ‘rocked’ — that the pas- 
sengers are all stunned too, if not worse,” said 
a panting, stout boy whom Neff had heard 
addressed as “Rev”; his plump cheeks, shiny 
with sensation, looked as if he had freshly 
anointed them with cream. 

“Gee ! I hope he won’t find the rear door — 
that tilted door of the Pullman — jammed,” 
gasped a tall, lank youth whom the waif iden- 
tified as Deanie — they were the two who had 
boosted the flaming topper through the car- 
window. “It is — it is-s stuck tight, that 
blamed door,” flickered Dean. “Hear him! 
He ’s using the porter’s steel stool upon it, I 
guess — ‘busting’ it — battering it down — 
gee ! Oh-h I if anyone can go it s-strong in 
an emergency, it ’s that red Drake 1” 

“Bully! Bully! There it goes d-down!” 
cried an older man, very pale, whose right arm 
Neff judged to be broken from the way that 
two younger Boy Scouts were attending to it, 
putting it in a sling. “Now — now, we can 
start getting them out !” 

[19] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


He lent even a little aid with his left hand, 
Neff saw that, while the less injured of the 
adult passengers together with the older boys 
lowered the occupants of the damaged Pullman 
from the rear, tilted entrance : men stunned, 
with torn clothing — women pallid, with 
streaming hair. 

“W- worst thing I ev-er saw!” moaned the 
waif to himself — and withdrew a little way 
to look on. 

Boys younger than he was — younger than 
his fourteen years — were stoutly helping in 
the work of rescue — now and then squirm- 
ingly feeling a numb elbow or knee, to ascer- 
tain if it still ‘‘belonged.” 

Plucking off their scout coats — the major 
portion of this active boy-swarm wore scout 
khaki — they 'were adroitly making stretchers, 
running their poles through embroidered scout- 
sleeves — stretchers on which some of the 
injured were laid and borne to the softest 
spot on the embankment. 

Others of this youthful first-aid corps were 
fetching water, bathing blood-stained faces, 
rolling a little coat into a pillow for a suf- 
ferer’s head — and all as naturally as if it 


[ 20 ] 


BUDDY 


were the very mission which had brought 
them here. 

“ Gee ! but those Boy Scouts sure can put it 
across/’ murmured the dummy watcher, the 
swamp castaway, but with no thought of put- 
ting anything “across” himself, until, sud- 
denly, a spark lodged even in his dead-wood — 
a fruitful one this time — a spark from that red 
head. 

For now — now came the moment when the 
beaten demon was sneaking from his lair again, 
to start a new disaster. 

Little fire — dread weeds of flame — were 
breaking out here, there, everywhere along 
the stricken train, none knew whence or how — 
unless the grinding wheels could tell the story, 
or the heating freight in the baggage-cars, over 
the embankment’s edge. 

“Drake!” cried the elderly man with the 
little white goatee — who, with the Scout- 
master, was attending to the train crew, the 
worst sufferers. “Dra-akel” 

“Ye-es, sir!” The fiery topper bending 
over an unconscious woman in the act of lower- 
ing her from the Pullman, was alertly lifted. 

“You — you take the older boys of your 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


patrol, get the chemicals from the passenger 
cars — water-r, too — put out those fires be- 
fore they spread ! Let the men attend to the 
rest of the passengers V* 

“Yes, sir! . . . Come now! fellows, make 
it fa-ast cried Drake. “Fire an' soda-water 
wait for no one!" with a feeble attempt at a 
joke. “Mustn't let 'em plunge through — 
the flames 1" 

And that was the moment when the spark in 
the waif s breast germinated. 

Suddenly, half hysterically, he pitched in to 
help — and found himself the bluntest tool. 

Among these edgy boy scouts who had bor- 
rowed the legs of the wind in their rush upon 
the fire, he was, for the most part, in the way, 
— elbowed round like a buffer. 

“Oh-h 1 wake up. Get the lead out of you," 
sneered one. “What are you doing here — 
burning up daylight ?" 

Whereupon the half-famished waif, galvan- 
ized into a lubberly attempt to improve day- 
light, instead of vainly consuming it, awk- 
wardly bumped into another who was lowering 
a pail of water over the embankment's edge. 

Half the liquid flew. 


BUDDY 


*Ww-w ! get back to your hole/’ snapped the 
bearer, the patrol leader — Drake of the fiery 
tongue and mien. 

And the waif — the waif, browbeaten in the 
past by his pal Dyke, the “Unc’,” who had 
left him to stay up or starve, slunk down the 
embankment — a little yellow-spotted animal. 

But — the animal cry did not come from his 
throat. 

“Ye-ow! Ye-ow-ow! . . . Yee-ow-ow-owT* 

Buried, crushed — frightfully pleading — a 
runner, a note, of it reached his abject ear. 

“Hully gee ! a dog. A dog, hound — hunt- 
ing dog — pinned down — pinned down by the 
wreck in that forward baggage car ! Gee-ee ! 
I m-must save the — pup.” 

He was no branded animal now. He was a 
champion. A champion, in a moment, from 
the feet no longer blundering to the flame in 
the hollow eyes, still surrounded by their 
brassy rings. 

Dyke and he had left a hunting dog, dear to 
his heart, behind in that little town of northern 
Virginia whence they had started on this luck- 
less trip — because it could not come in on a 
daredevil ‘‘plumer’s” game. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“ A hound — young hound — in that b-burn- 
ing car ! Maybe two or three 1 Oh-h 1 I must 
s-save the pups.” 

Recklessly he was mounting upon the caved- 
in side of the sweltering baggage-car, defying, 
wildly defying, its burning breath — the smoke 
— where a flame was creeping towards the 
tethered animals, bound for Florida and hunt- 
ing, too. 

His young face that of a madman, haggard 
under its muddy -smears, he was flinging aside 
empty milk-cans, flour-sacks, broken pieces of 
frame which had piled themselves upon the 
three young hounds, all forgotten by their 
“ rocked ” owner who had been in that foremost 
Pullman. 

“ R-right you are — Buddy ! We dl wor-rk 
together.” 

It was a voice at his elbow speaking — the 
voice of the patrol leader, Drake, who had 
ordered him to his hole. 

“The poor — pups! The p-poor pups!” 
was the one raving answer. 

The liberator laid hold at the moment of a 
heavy timber, part of the wrecked car-frame, 
which pinned down one of the moaning dogs. 

124] 


BUDDY 


His famished strength staggered back from 
moving it. 

“We’ll make it together — Buddy y' said 
that voice at his elbow again. 

And even at that minute a thrill swept the 
waif from head to foot; it was his first real 
taste of the team spirit — true gang spirit — 
the grand, the fighting thrill when brother 
“makes it” side by side with brother. 

Sorely injured one of them, lamed all three of 
them, the moaning dogs were freed. 

“ So — so-o you were the first to catch on to 
their being in the baggage-car — start in to get 
them out ! Good work. Buddy ! ” cried other 
of the fire-fighters coming up at the moment. 

But the “pup’s” champion looked wildly — 
dazedly — at them, as he dropped weakly 
upon a piece of wreckage, blowing upon his 
scorched hands. 

This digging-out had reminded him of some- 
thing — weirdly reminded him. 

“They — they We not all,” he managed to get 
out. “Somebody — somebody else b-buried ! 
Man — darky — section-man — buried — buried 
up-p there, ruins of that old shanty beside the 
tr-rack ! I saw him go in — just — before — ” 

[25] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


“Ou-ouch! Horrible!’’ The leader’s breath 
shook. ‘ ^He c-can’t be living now. Still — we 
might try 1 Come along, you two — Dean and 
Rev 1 Let — let the others finish up with the 
fire!” 

Breathlessly he was climbing the embank- 
ment again, followed by his two supporters. 

The waif — no longer quite such a castaway 
— pulling himself together, crawled after them. 

Reaching the embankment, he turned sud- 
denly sick — sicker than the smoke had made 
him ! Forth from the gray wreck of that rail- 
road shanty protruded — gruesome sight — 
the dark toes of a pair of rubber boots. 

The negro had worn such high boots when 
he played In-ki-bink with him in the swamp. 

“Hea-vens! what’s — this?” Drake 
touched a mud-caked rubber toe ; it was 
empty. 

“Oh-h ! he must be doubled up under-r the 
timbers.” The leader’s forehead grew clammy. 
“ I guess he ’s gone. But a nigger has nine 
lives. Time may be worth the dickens of a lot 
just now. . . . We ’ll dig him out, anyway !” 

He laid hold on the topmost timbers — and 
flung them aside. 


[26] 


BUDDY 


His two chums, Deanie and the Rev, both 
looking a little sick, too — they were rather fed 
up upon horror by this time — pitched in to 
help him. 

Even the waif, reckless of his burnt hands, 
put his last pinch of starveling pep into scat- 
tering those timbers, like a hen. 

“I guess the engine, in plunging, only struck 
one corner of the hut — with the tree beside it 
— and knocked ’em galley west,” said Drake, 
working maniacally. 

All of a sudden he paused, the perspiring 
leader. A spasm shook him. 

Kneeling he thrust one arm in under the re- 
maining heap of gray timbers. 

“The snake’s ribs!” he ejaculated — and 
scattered them like a scratching fox. 

No black form 1 No huddled limbs 1 No 
dark feet of a section man who would never 
walk a track again 1 

Nothing — nothing but a pair of rubber 
boots 1 

And over the embankment’s rim, a few yards 
away, a woolly head suddenly thrust, wild eyes 
rolling — a voice out of terror’s tomb hoarsely 
hailing : 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


“Air ye a -digging o* me out, boss! Lawd 
sakes 1 dis niggah ain* half-ways oveh Jor-rdan 
yet. He ain’ hanging up de fiddle y-yet 1” 
“The cat's knuckles 1 The snake's ribs 1" 

It was indeed a beggar-all climax. The boys 
were young. As yet, so far as they knew, 
Death had come down, flat-footed, upon no- 
body. They lay down and howled beside the 
track. 

And the waif, no longer a castaway, yapped 
with them. 


CHAPTER III 


Sons of Rest 

I N — in the name of Jack Pudding! 
where did you come from ? What circus 
dropped you here ? '' 

It was more than an hour later. A wreck- 
ing crew had arrived to head-pin the engine, 
uncouple it from the battered cars — bringing 
a doctor and nurses with them. 

Pale forms still lay upon the embankment’s 
rim — some of them on the stretchers formed 
of the scouts’ coats. But the horror was 
lifting. 

And weary boys, scorched as weary, who 
had found the dining-car in the rear storm- 
ridden, but still fruitful, had “cornered” some 
sandwiches and tepid coffee, and were now 
breakfasting upon the embankment’s side 
— the waif among them, eating ravenously. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

‘‘You — you were on our train, were you 
fired off Drake again, attacking an orange be- 
tween questions as he scrutinized the hungry, 
four-foot-six boy, smeared with bright mud in 
a daubed Punch and Judy make-up. 

“No — no, I was n’t on the special,” replied 
the latter, with his mouth full. “I was on an 
old slow coach of a train that snaked along 
here about daybreak an’ stopped fer orders.” 

“Guess the fact that it did stop saved it 
from the fate of the flyer — or maybe it was 
responsible for the broken rail,” put in Dean, 
breathlessly. 

The waif nodded. 

“I got off to stretch my legs — ” he bit the 
words into an apple — “an’ raced down the 
embankment, here, to get a look at a strange 
bird, with face and legs the color of the swamp 
off there — only brighter. Gee ! it was a 
peach of a bird. I never saw one like it be- 
fore.” 

Neff’s face brightened irresponsibly. Men- 
tally he was sailing off on a sunny fly-way 
with that bird, away from his own forsaken 
dilemma. 

“Humph! White ibis — maybe,” put in 


SONS OF REST 


the Rev. “Didn’t think you ’d run across even 
a small flock in northern Florida this time of 
year. Might, though — weather ’s so warm ! 
We ’ll see plenty of them on Mosquito Inlet, 
where it snows birds.” 

“Well! and what happened? You mixed 
things up between that ibis an’ you, so that 
you got left. Train went on and left you be- 
hind, feeling ’bout as small ’s a speck of dust 
— speck of dust cut up into homeopathic 
doses, eh?” Drake grinned. 

The waif’s vagabond grin, in answer, was 
as irresponsible as before. He was not feel- 
ing small now. 

“Who was with you?” said Dean, stretch- 
ing his slim six feet upon the embankment 
grass. 

“Oh 1 my pal — man I pulled in with ; he — 
he picked up another cahoot on the train an’ 
I guess he was glad to get rid of me — though 
I ’d been going with him a year. Wow 1” 

The slang of the “tough gang,” once so 
familiar to Drake’s ear, fell strangely now 
upon the more educated schoolboy accents 
around. 

“And what are you going to do — pick up 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


another cahoot, partner?” he asked, looking 
down upon that elastic waif. 

'‘Nope. Guess I ’ll travel round on my own 
hook for awhile now — if I can get anywhere 
out o’ this. Dyke — he ’s the man I was with 

— used to laugh at my queer ‘ curves,’ when I 
wanted to get off by myself an’ watch the 
birds — gee ! that ibis was a peach, it had 
black tips to its wings — or the foxes an’ 
lizards.” 

The laugh had the legs of the wind now, as 
if it was accustomed to eddy round in strange 
places. 

“ But where did you get the varnish ? ” said 
Dean, tracing the outline of the carroty 
smears. 

“Oh-h ! I fell to fooling with that funny old 
darky in the swamp down there — he was on 
a streak about his goat — the one who isn’t 
hanging up the fiddle — y-yet ! ” 

There was a general buzz of laughter at this 

— low because those suffering forms on the 
hill-top could not be forgotten. 

While yet it breezed around him Neff’s 
expression changed, became a screen for his 


own concerns. 


SONS OF REST 


“But who are — you he asked excitedly, 
looking from the three forms directly sur- 
rounding him to the embankment dotted with 
boys, some in scout khaki, others in ordinary 
schoolboy rig. 

“We three! We are the Sons of Rest.” 
It was the Rev who impressively answered. 
“Fact!” He nodded. “Our dormitory den 
in the ramshackle old building down on 
Mosquito Inlet which shelters the winter 
semester of Maunsert Academy has this red- 
letter poster on the door : The Club of the Sons 
of Rest.” 

“ Bah ! Sons of Grind, rather, who Ve dug 
like bears all-11 this past year,” the patrol 
leader bristled, “so that we might get ahead 
on our courses, all five — ahead of our senior 
class, that is — so that we won’t have to hit 
the spring exams at Easter-time, but can get 
a month off ... a whole month off, at 
Easter ; and a chance — a chance to win the 
Adventurers’ Cup ! Zoom!” 

“The Adventurers’ Cup? Is it a prize? 
You ’re a school — then ?” 

Neff’s questions piled themselves quickly. 
Strangely enough, there on the embankment 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

some “scrubby’' cloak seemed slipping from 
him and a more natural self seeing daylight. 

“Why! of course we’re a school — old 
Maunsert Academy migrating, like the birds, 
along the bobolink route, south.” It was the 
stout “Son of Rest” who answered. South 

— south to Mosquito Inlet, Florida east 
coast, where — where, incidentally, we teach 
the laws of energy to lazy alligators by grunt- 
ing at ’em down a gooser-rod — the art of 
retreat to bears and panthers!” 

“Pshaw! don’t mind the Rev — Sharron 

— and the stuff he gets off. It ’s only his 
imagination of a preacher pup!” Drake 
laughed. “We may get a chance at a ’gator 
hunt, any day, near the Inlet ! None — none 
at bear and panther until we get off — off on 
that Easter trip, canoeing trip, down to the 
heart of the Big Cypress ! Down — down to 
Indian Potato Slough, main channel of the 
Big Cypress Swamp — which may be dry as 
an alleyway by that time.” 

“ But it — sure’ — was the rainy season 
when it was named,” murmured Dean plain- 
tively. “When it got its Indian name : 0-kol- 
o-a-coochee! If — that isn’t a torrent!” 


SONS OF REST 


The waif gasped. All this — all this 
sounded vaguely familiar, like some dripping 
heard afar off, disguised by creepers. 

“Is it a fly-way for birds ?” he asked. 

“Yes, for all that don't follow the Gulf 
coast, going north or south,” replied the Rev, 
who seemed to be an authority. “It 's there 
that you 'd see the white ibises by the hun- 
dreds — rare ‘pinks’ and egrets too!” 

“And is it there — there that you ’re going 
to chase after adventure, go out for this Cup, 
whatever that means ? ” Neff’s breath flamed ; 
he blew upon his burnt fingers as if applying a 
check draught to some fire within, too. 

“Well I we hope to ‘see the elephant,’ have 
some big experiences,” said Dean moderately. 
“But as for the Cup, humph I I guess it’s 
some one of the rich men’s sons in the Acad- 
emy; some one whose dad has a thirty thou- 
sand dollar yacht who can go down to the 
great waters of the Gulf — Gulf of Mexico — 
tarpon-fishing, after the Silver King, or off to 
the Bahamas, sword-fishing, who ’ll pull off 
that lion’s prize,” laughingly. 

“We — we have n’t told you what it is yet,” 
said Drake. “You see in an Academy, like 


[351 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


ours, all sorts of prizes, scholarships and silver 
cups are offered yearly by clubs and societies 
outside, whose members, or some of them, are 
alumnae of the school. Well ! one rich Chi- 
cago man has endowed a fund for a ‘Prize 
Speaking Contest.’ ’ Guess the Rev has a 
chance on that ; he can go the thunder or work 
the sob-stuff in, to melt your very gizzard — 
though he ’s the worst demon of us all,” with 
a shrug. “But this Chicagoan’s brother who 
belongs to an Adventurers’ Club, the members 
of which must be real bighorns — have had 
five startling adventures in the open — he 
said he was n’t going to offer a prize to any 
boy for declaiming somebody else’s thoughts, 
or proclaiming his deeds. He — he was 
going to give a cup, a silver cup, to the fellow 
who could tell the best story of life, or ad- 
venture, as he came in contact with it himself 
— and tell it in the best way 1 Was n’t that 
ripping?” 

“It, sure’, was!” said the waif, who seemed 
to be changing minute by minute until he was 
almost a stranger to himself. “ I hope you ’ll 
run on to the panther down there — before he 
runs on to you,” he added politely. “Is this 

[36] 


SONS OF REST 


Indian Potato Slough a place where few white 
men have been 

“Mercy! hardly any/’ said the Rev. 
“That ’s the fun of it 1 No boy scouts or any 
boys, ever, except Indian ones, have been so 
far into the Big Cypress yet — though it 
isn’t so hard now as it used to be, because 
of the drainage canals. But, whoopee!” his 
teeth suddenly clicked, “there is one white 
man down there — has his Wild Man’s ‘hang- 
out’ there all the time — who knows it — 
knows it like his own backyard, when he had 
one. But he’s ‘loco’ — heap ‘loco!’” 

“What does that mean ?” The castaway’s 
breath tickled his throat like a feather, flut- 
tering out, a white plume, upon the breeze. 

“He’s a misanthrope; so the Scoutmaster 
says.” Dean meditatively rolled a stone 
down the embankment. 

“‘Misanthrope!’ Bah! Just plain crazy — 
that ’s what the Indian ‘loco’ means ! Crazy 
as a ‘nut’ — and then some !” Drake laughed 
— but with a curdled note. 

“Well! anyhow, he started out by being a 
misanthrope — man-hater,” argued Dean, the 
lengthy. “Only he does n’t hand out hate all 

[37] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


round, like sour apples, as most of these num- 
skulls do. He keeps it all for white men, his 
own kind, and they don’t get sick on it,” with 
a laugh, “for he only wafts it to ’em by aero- 
gram. He ’ll never look upon the face of a 
white man again. That ’s his vow. So they 
say !” 

“But he’s mild as milk with the copper- 
skins — Indians — for all he ’s a Wild Man,” 
threw in the Rev. “Florida Indians — Sem- 
inole tribe, you know ! They ’re mighty good 
to him. Always kind to crazy people!” 

“But — but how did he get that way?” 
bleated the waif ; again his curiosity took 
filmy shape upon his white breath — for the 
morning had not yet warmed up. 

“Gosh! That’s quite a yarn. Every- 
body knows it down on the Inlet — our Inlet, 
where we ’re going ! An old colored man 
there saw him once, but he ’s in his dotage 
— Minstrel Bill ! To begin with, his son went 
back on him.” Drake’s glance turned un- 
easily to the top of the embankment, crowned 
by temporary Red Cross quarters, where suf- 
fering and succor, held sway. 

“Pshaw! we won’t help those injured pas- 

[38] 


SONS OF REST 


sengers by thinking about them/’ put in the 
practical Dean. ‘‘Nor the brakeman and 
fireman who have gone West, either,” he 
added, in a tone reverently lowered. “Ou- 
ouch ! I ’d like to lose myself for awhile with 
the Wild Man in the Big Cypress Swamp — 
after-r that wreck. Well ! his only son did 
turn out a ‘bad un,’ forged his father’s sig- 
nature an’ managed to get his money, some of 
it, out of New York banks, while his dad was 
down in the Land of the Big Snake — Ever- 
glades and Cypress region — studying rattlers 
and gophers — everything wild from an orchid 
to an owl. He was a regular Nature wiz. 
What he did n’t know about birds an’ beasts 
— and reptiles, too — wouldn’t — wouldn’t 
sell for much anywhere.” 

“Was that what made him ‘wild’? His 
son ?” asked Neff. 

“Sowed the seed, I reckon,” thus the Rev 
took up the tale. “The Nature freak went 
north when he heard it — when an Indian 
brought him a letter from a trading post — it’s 
nearly a dozen years ago now, I guess — he 
did n’t prosecute his only son, but he cast him 
off then and there, like parings. To save him 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

from temptation, I suppose, he drew the re- 
mainder of his money — he had been a fairly 
rich guy — sold out what property he had, 
turned it all into bonds, high bonds and bills, 
which he is reported to have brought back 
with him in a wallet — a r-rich wallet to 
the Big Cypress.” 

‘‘Gee whiz! ’Wonder somebody doesn’t 
hold him up, out there, an’ steal his money- 
wad.” The waif’s breath hissed now as it 
heaved and bourgeoned. 

“ Because — because there are none but 
‘ Cottonmouths,* swamp moccasins, to do it 1” 
fired off Drake. “None — none but the 
snake and the Seminole know where his lair 
is — at the hear-rt of the Big Cypress Swamp.” 
It is n’t all swamp,” excitedly. “Three levels 
to it — that region which is called the Big 
Cypress 1 Swamps and snakes have the 
lower and larger flat, prairie the second, where 
they sublet to rattlers and ’gators,” laugh- 
ingly, “and the little hammocks, or tree-belts, 
the third ; and — and we ’re going to explore 
all three — ” his eyes flashed — “in a try-y 
for the Adventurers' Cup. Who knows but 
we may run on to the Wild Man 1” 


SONS OF REST 


*‘You ’ll have to do the chameleon act, 
color yourself copper — or he ’ll brain you 
with his bludgeon,” chaffed Dean. 

“He always was friendly with the dusky 
Seminoles,” said Sharron, the Rev. “I ’ve 
heard that their old chief, Tallahassee — 
who ’s dead long ago — would sit up half the 
night by the ring-fire, yarning to him, when 
first the naturalist went down there, studying 
wild life. And Tallahassee was so carried 
away with him as a Nature wizard that he 
gave him a name meaning: Great Naturalist. 
Let’s see! What was it? Im-mar-neas, I 
guess ! One of those spliced Indian names,” 
chucklingly. “But — musical! And the 
Nature shark was so taken with it that he 
signed it to all the magazine articles and 
books he wrote. ’ Guess he shed his sur- 
name long before he shed his senses. I 
never heard him called anything but Im- 
mar.” 

“Nor I!” said Drake. “It was mighty 
rough on him — the thing which happened 
afterwards among the Indians, which really 
— really turned him ‘loco,’ so that for ten 
years he has n’t looked upon a white man.” 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


“ W-what — what was that breathed the 
waif. 

“Wowee! A horror w- worse than the 
wreck — I guess!’' The red-haired patrol 
leader breathed heavily. “The naturalist 
had already ‘soured’ upon palefaces because 
of the trouble with his son when, one day, 
out in the swamp he ran onto a white man in 
such bad shape that he helped him ; gave him 
grub and medicine and salt for his alligator 
skins. He charged the hunter not to bring 
whiskey near the camp, because he had a 
Seminole guide with him then — one Tommy 
Buster. But first thing he knew the ’gator 
hunter did — went out to a trading post an’ 
got some.” 

“And Buster got at the ketome^ fire-water, 
in the night,” took up Dean, as the leader 
paused for breath, “and went, as the Indians 
said, ‘too much crazy in de head !’” 

“Went back to his own little camp on the 
reservation and — started shooting it up,” 
said the Rev gloomily. “Oh! ’twas a bad 
business. He killed his squaw and two little 
papooses — wounded others — before Brown 
Tiger, a chief, wrested the rifle from him, 

[ 4^1 


SONS OF REST 


stopped his running amuck with a bullet. 
But the naturalist ran amuck when he heard 
it. Has been running amuck — himself an’ 
his money-wad — ever-r since.” 

“Oh-h ! he is n’t dangerously mad, I guess,” 
said Drake hopefully ; ‘‘ though he did want to 
kill the ’gator hunter. But his great reason 
just — toppled. Never since has he looked 
upon the face of a white man. Never since 
has he come anywhere near a white settle- 
ment. Only the Indian knows where his lair 
is at the heart of the Big Cypress ! Only the 
Indian ever takes him food and ammunition 
— togs too, maybe, unless he has diwspensed 
with ’em by this time — wears only a hair- 
shirt,” with a twinkle. 

“And he has sense enough left to pay the 
Seminoles, so they say,” wound up the Rev. 
“Sometimes he hits the trail for their reserva- 
tion — and puts money in a hen’s nest. And 
they would n’t cheat him. By all accounts, 
they ’re awfully ‘white,’ those copperskins. 
But, by gr-racious ! I did hear,” bristling 
excitedly, “ that some paleface, an outlaw — 
whole lot of outlaws hiding out down there in 
the Big Cypress — did try to work swamp law 

[43] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


on him once — stalk the Nature freak and 
kill him. But the Indians — frustrated — it.” 

“Yes — yes, ‘Feet’ remembers tha-at!” 
quivered Dean. “Word of it leaked out 
through a trading store; and it was talked 
about even as far north as Mosquito Inlet. It 
was the first winter that the Academy came 
south. We — we ’re later than usual mi- 
grating this year,” he explained to the waif, 
“because an epidemic str-ruck the school, up 
north. ‘Feet,’ otherwise Dingtoe, alias ‘Feet 
Almighty,’ is the oldest boy in the school,” 
he chuckled, “a member of the Sigma 
Zeta Kappa — sportiest society — composed 
mostly of rich men’s sons, one of whom will 
pull off the lion’s Cup for some Easter adven- 
ture,” with a low whistle, “unless — unless 
he has the winning story already tucked up his 
sleeve.” 

“Or into the soles of his shoes,” laughed the 
Rev. “Whew ! It would be some feat then; 
Dingtoe, alias Wade, wears an eleven-sized 
shoe and is centre of the basket-ball team.” 

“Ha! We — we have it in for Dana 
Wade, alias Dingtoe — alias a hundred other 
things!” bristled Dean. “He put cactus in 


SONS OF REST 


our cots last year. This year — well ! maybe he 
is n't the only one to have a plot up his sleeve." 

“This — y-year!" On the waifs tongue 
the words became a dirge. 

They cornered him ofF, in his vagabond 
loneliness. 

“Wow!" he barked forlornly. “What — 
what it must be to be 'mong fellows like you 
— in a school 1 I — " 

The gnawing hunger within consumed the 
rest : a hunger that was not physical. 

As its hollow flash was reflected in his com- 
panions’ eyes it, somehow, called for a mist to 
put out the flame. 

“Well — well! in all this chin-chatter you 
have n’t even told us your name y-yet," said 
Drake, a little huskily. 

“ Hey ! Have n’t I ? It — it ’s a ‘ shorter, ’ " 
with a grin. “How about NefF — NefFHare ? 
For nicknames. Cotton-top — or Amber 
Jack !’’ The boy shook his light head — quite 
silvery in the sunshine. 

“If you were with us, you’d get a few 
more." The Rev laughed frankly. “The 
only thing you get for nothing in a school is a 
nickname — and long nails !" 

[45] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


“This — this is hardly the time, or place, 
for laughter, Sharron.*' 

“No-o, sir!’’ The rebuked one sprang to 
his feet, reddening hotly. 

So — so did the other two Sons of Rest, 
nimbly as squirrels, their heels coming to- 
gether, their right hands going up in the Scout 
Salute. 

“ The — Headmaster 1 ” bristled Drake in 
the castaway’s ear. “The — the kid who 
saved the hounds, sir 1” he added swiftly, as a 
happy thought, pushing the piebald hero 
forward. “He was n’t on the special with us ; 
he was dropped — left behind — by a train 
that passed here earlier. He was the first to 
discover the dogs in the burning baggage-car. 
But for him, they might never — never — 
have been got out 1” 

Was it the memory of a long-past day when 
he, himself, had been a member of a “tough 
gang,” he, the patrol leader, the Academy 
senior — that moved Drake to make as much 
of the rescue as possible and “ keep under the 
bushes” himself. 

The waif would fain have retreated there, 
too. He shivered under the judicial eye, blue 


[46] 


SONS OF REST 


as salt-ice, of the man with the little pointed 
beard whom he had noticed before, rendering 
what help he could to the train-crew. 

But the senior had struck the right string. 
The Headmaster was a dog-lover. 

“Fine!*' he applauded. “Fi-inel" 

The frost of his delicate little goatee caught 
the sun, as he looked at the trembling waif. 


[47] 


CHAPTER IV 


A Chance 

“^<TEADY there, my boy! Steady! The 
ground isn’t hot — still — is it?” 

The Headmaster smiled encouragingly 
upon the hounds’ rescuer, as the latter stood 
first on one leg, then on the other, after the 
manner of a heron in the swamp. 

‘‘No — no-o, sir!” The waif, his blond 
head lifting, managed for a minute to balance 
his weight upon both feet. 

“And so, for a year, you ’ve been leading a 
vagabond’s life, knocking about the country 
with this man, Jerry Dyke as you call him, 
who, you say, would be glad to get rid of you 
now — having picked up another pal — and 
with him you ran away from that Dutch 
farmer in Pennsylvania with whom you were 
placed, at eleven, when you left the Little 

[48] 


A CHANCE 


Wanderers’ Home in which you were brought 
up. That’s your history, so far as you 
remember it, eh ? ” The Master’s brows were 
knit. 

“Ye-es, sir,” trembling. 

“You were placed in the Home at five, 
after your father was killed by accident, 
run over by an automobile you say, your 
mother being dead, too — and no relations 
found to care for you. You don’t remember 
your father at all ? ” 

“I was — barely — five,” friendlessly. 
“Seems sometimes — ” the waif licked his 
dry lips — “as if I kind o’ dream o’ his tak- 
in’ me to — to a moving picture place, 
I guess it was — an’ of his doin’ a dance 
and laughin’ an’ singin’ — a lot of people 
laughing, too — an’ then crying. An’ I cried 
— and a big man picked me up.” 

“Who was the man?” 

“The manager of the moving picture palace, 
sir. He told me about it, afterwards.” 

“ Did he tell you anything about your 
father ?” 

“Only that he came to him looking for a 
job, sir, chance to do a vaudeville stunt, an’ 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


he put him on ‘Amateur’s Night’; and Dad 
did so well that he engaged him for a month. 
He said — the manager — ” 

“What did he say?” 

“Tha-at my father was a reg’lar gnouf- 
gnouf — actor — sir ; that he could ‘ sling the 
English ’ ; that he looked to him — to him, 
like a swell man — stoney broke — that-at — ” 

“What — else?” 

The waif stood doubtfully upon one foot 
again — the other curled high. 

“An’ that when he, the manager, asked my 
dad w-what name he should give him on the 
posters, my father looked queer an’ said; 
‘Oh! Hare, I guess — that’ll do as well as 
any other. ’ ” 

1 — s-see. 

The Headmaster saw double at the moment : 
the broken “ guouf-gnouf ” suppressing his 
identity, the boy standing upon one foot upon 
the lonely embankment — with but one leg 
to stand upon in a difficult world. He 
cleared his throat — the Master. 

“The Dutch farmer was kind to you after 
you left the Home, was he?” he asked. 

“Sometimes, sir. T-twice he licked me 


A CHANCE 


har-rd, once for slippin* off to a baseball 
game, an’ — an’ then for — for lying around 
in the woods, watching a weazel after a 
pheasant. ” 

The young, sharp features winced — winced 
under the shining wonder of that remembered 
watching in the boy’s eyes — the way of the 
weazel with the ring-necked pheasant. 

‘‘Well, doubtless, you should have been 
doing something else. This Dyke came to 
work for the farmer ; and when he went you 
ran away with him. What sort of man was 
he ? How did he look when he saw you were 
left behind, this morning?” 

“He — he ‘hollered’ to me to ‘Stay up’ 
sir — ‘not to do anything that he wouldn’t 
do! . . .’ Wow!” 

For the first time a grin, nibbling at the 
veil of awe, twisted the young lips. 

The Headmaster eyed the derelict keenly. 

“And what he did wouldn’t always bear 
inspection, eh ? In other words he was 
crooked — crooked as a Virginia fence, was 
he ? And bent you — ” 

The light “Cotton-top” drooped heavily — 
drooped as if it were a black-ball. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Then — then, round and swift as a silver 
shot, it was flung up. 

“But I — I want to go straight, sir-r,'* 
pleaded the young hounds’ rescuer; and the 
passion that saved them, now burned for him- 
self. “ I ’d do anything — gee ! anything that 
meant har-rd work!” piteously. “I — I’d 
work my head off now, sir-r, if on-ly I could 
get a chance to — to learn some things — and 
go-o straight I ” 

The appeal went beyond the Headmaster 
— even. It called to the four quarters of the 
earth, it seemed, to find a place for a boy 
where he could stand on two legs — where 
the ground was not hot beneath him. 

Yet the Master might never have answered 
as he did answer, but for the wreck whose 
fires had consumed all scrub growth in man 
and boy — so that human bedrock — brother- 
hood — was laid bare. 

“We’re a school,” he said shakily as if 
speaking half to himself, half to the wild- 
eyed pleader before him. “A large private 
school bound south, later than usual, for 
our winter term on Mosquito Inlet — Florida 
east coast. Ra-are bird sanctuary 1 Some 


A CHANCE 


— some of our boys have been left up north, 
ill. One teacher, too ! Another has had his 
arm broken in this wreck. If it were n’t that 
we are so-o shorthanded as to teachers . . . 
Well ! I have some boys with me, five or 
six out of a hundred and twenty-five, who 
are paying their own way in the school by 
working — helping the chef — ” 

“ Gee-ee ! I ’d slave for a lifetime — for-r 
a chance like that!” It was a young wail 
now; it darkened the smears about the boy’s 
working mouth, as with heart’s blood. 

It was the Scoutmaster who summed up 
the outcome later in the humming ears of the 
Sons of Rest. 

“That waif will get a chance to go on with 
us, all right,” he said, “and work out his own 
salvation in the school. He, at least, may 
bless the wreck which stirred up everything — 
and everybody — around here, for a time. ” 

“How — how-ow do you know, sir?” in- 
quired Scout Drake. 

Merle Crane, Scoutmaster, thrust his hands 
into his pockets and whistled — whistled 
deeply. 


[5^3] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 

‘T Ve been a long time with old Maunsert/’ 
so he delivered himself oracularly; “and 
there’s one thing, among others, that I ve 
noticed : that is, that when the Headmaster 
has his mind made up to do something for 
a boy and never expects to reap a penny out 
of it, then — then his blue eyes sparkle and 
his beard grows!” 


CHAPTER V 
Room-Mates 

B ig feet climbed, noiselessly, the long, 
white flight of stairs skirting an open 
courtyard, with a royal palm in the 
centre — emblem of trophy for a school — 
which led from the warm fascination of the 
Florida night to the dormitory floor of the 
great, rambling, wooden building which shel- 
tered the winter semester of Maunsert Acad- 
emy, when it migrated like the birds. 

‘‘Wow ! I am late. Green slip for me, if the 
prof hears me ! Five of those tardy slips 
mean ‘extra' — writing out stuff, under the 
eye of a master ! Ou-ouch ! " 

Dana Wade, alias Dingtoe or Tootsie, other- 
wise Feet Almighty — by virtue of his wearing 
an eleven shoe and being pivot of the basket- 
ball team — whispered softly to the palm-fans, 

[55] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


and their broad sigh answered like the sob of 
the ocean-tide which had been mainly respon- 
sible for Wade's tardiness in consulting his 
pillow. 

“Pshaw! I 'd have made it from Dewy’s 
house in twenty minutes, along the beach, if 
that Tartar of a tide had n’t gone back on me,” 
he confided to the feather-duster palm, “al- 
though — although we did run old Time to the 
last stroke, discussing that sand-sailer race 
against the Blount School — which has its 
winter headquarters in the south, too — to be 
pulled oflF next Saturday. Whoopee 1 For 
rare fun nothing can equal those big, twenty- 
by-thirty yachts on wheels along forty miles 
of splendid beach — ’stiff breeze blowing off the 
surf. . . . Jove 1 Eleven o’clock str-riking 1 
All lights out, except the red ones 1 The cat’s 
knuckles 1 if only my feet were n’t such thum- 

yy 

pers. 

Wade had reached a dim, gray corridor, by 
this time, one of four, lined with dormitory 
doors, which skirted the open courtyard 
around which the school buildings clustered. 

“Yes — yes, if the prof’s around, I ’ll tell 
him the tide was the scapegrace. Came in on 

156] 


ROOM-MATES 


me like a cataract, so that I had to leave that 
dandy race-course of the beach, take to the 
scrubby road through the palmetto ! And the 
‘flivver' is n't a ‘smooth rider' — not by a long 
shot !• It almost landed me in the Devil's Bed- 
chamber." 

The senior's chuckle was thorny now, as he 
thought of that savage grotto, armed with 
yucca, or Spanish bayonet — forgetting that 
he had ever lined with cactus his classmates' 
cots. 

“Humph! I shouldn't have ‘admired' 
spending the night there, when I have a snug 
little ten by twelve to myself here," he re- 
flected. “In the school's southern headquar- 
ters I 'm the only one to bunk alone. Now 1 if 
I had to turn in, three together, like the down- 
trodden Sons of Rest. . . . Such a label, with 
a live wire like that Drake for leader — and a 
demon-hazer, like the Rev 1 . . . Well! any- 
how, mine is the ‘sunny side of the fence,'" 
with a commiserating look at the dim panels 
of a door next his own, on which the moonless 
darkness obscured a proclamation : The Club 
of the Sons of Rest. 

“Even if I returned at midnight, nobody to 

[57] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


squeal. No room-mate to heave a shoe at me, 
for being late!” 

Wade's key was softly turning the lock now. 
It was a kingly look with which he entered his 
little bedchamber. 

‘‘Nobody to give me away — unless it be a 
niggling match 1 Let me see, where are they, 
the matches ? Oh 1 atop of the wainscoting. 
Whe-ew 1 Dark as Erebus — ugh 1” 

He felt with his hand along the darkest wall, 
threw it out . . . and gripped a tail. A tail 
warm and thickset 1 A tail wired by tension 
and the fact that it was tied to the closet door ! 

“Hea-vens 1 Am I in the — Devil’s — Bed- 
chamber ?” 

He fell upon a hairy neck. 

And out of the darkness a tell-tale voice 
arose to which a town-crier’s would be a 
mumble : 

“ Ee-yah ! Eee-yah 1 ^Q~Y3h-ah-ah-h! ” 

“Great Caesar! is it you-ou ? You! You 
Maunsert mocking-bird ! You — hawse-pipe 
canary! . . . Oh-h, Brother Burro!” 

The answer was a scuffle — the closet door 
flying open. Thud ! Thud ! Thud 1 The 
donkey leaped upon the bed. 

[581 


ROOM-MATES 


Every wire in the school cot screeched a pro^ 
test, as his hoofs played “jazz’’ upon it. 

The cot became a tinkling cymbal. 

“Heavens ! What d’you think you ar-re — 
an acrobat with a tambourine?” Wade’s 
whisper was very faint. 

Fainter, still, was one hissed through a ven- 
tilator shaft above his head — from what he 
had regarded as the shady side of the parti- 
tion : 

‘Muckle’ it up ! Muff its feet ! Try-y a 
little light on the subject.” 

But the room-mate was not there to have 
his feet “muffed.” 

He played jazz music again upon the cot. 
He backed off it — and knocked over a table. 

“Me for the madness too!” said that bed- 
side table — and riotously stood upon its head. 

Books, banjo, plane, drawing instruments 
hurled brick-bats at the darkness — the banjo 
with a beaten squall. 

“Oh, go it — go-o it!” The owner of the 
snug ten by twelve — the sugar-plum sleeping 
quarters — stumbled, helplessly, over a chair. 

There was not even a kick left in his feet al- 
mighty. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Before he could nerve himself to obey that 
impassioned whisper from above and try a 
little light on the subject — the hairy subject 
— light was turned upon him. 

He found himself gazing foolishly into the 
eye of an electric torch, in the hand of a sar- 
castic prof. 

The proctor — present disciplinarian of this 
dormitory floor — surveyed the scene dryly. 

*'Onos mimitail The ass apes/^ he suavely 
remarked. 

Wade feebly cackled : whom the ass was 
aping the Master in Classics did not state. 

“What — what’s all the tr-rouble here?” 
asked the latter again ; and, now, his tone was 
so very dry that it threatened to catch fire, 
like stubble, and wildly burn up in a laugh. 

“It’s only ... I came in, sir, rather late, 
and I found This in the room. . . . You may 
leave it to your Uncle Dudley ! if I don’t get 
even with the Sons of Rest,” vowed the victim 
under his breath. “ Sons of Rest ! Sons of Be- 
lial ! I thought they were so taken up with 
initiating that new kid brought on here from 
the wreck, a month ago, that they had no time 
to put anything over on me.’^ 


ROOM-MATES 


“But how did anybody, ever, get him up 
here 

The proctor was turning light now upon the 
shaggy little donkey’s blinking eyes — upon 
his grinning, white muzzle — on the twitching 
ears, switching tail — the face wiser than the 
ancients amid the havoc the heels had wrought. 

M-must have smuggled him upstairs in the 
afternoon, sir, during baseball practice, kept 
him muzzled in a closet, until — until they 
could get a chance to r-rustle him in he-re.” 
The hazed senior’s voice shook. 

“Jove! One of those little half-wild don- 
keys that roam the Savannah near St. Augus- 
tine, is n’t it, captured — brought along here, 
to haul school stores ? Only partly — broken.” 
The prof felt that his dignity was fast becom- 
ing stubble. “Aheu 1 There — there he starts 
in to bray again 1” 

Dignity was dregs now. Proctor and school- 
boy, together, doubled over upon a laughter- 
ache as the little gray burro, pocket edition of 
the donkey, laid back his long ears, bowed a 
prophetic head and delivered an hysterical de- 
nunciation of mankind in general — of stu- 
dents who came in late in particular — with a 


[6i] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


volume of tone wholly out of proportion to his 
hundred and twenty-five pounds of scuffling 
weight. 

‘'Heavens ! pipe down. You — you need n’t 
make your remarks so loud,” argued Wade. 

“Oh-h, Balaam’s ass was n’t ‘in it’ with him 
for grinning rebuke. . . . But we ’ve got to 
get him out of here — or he ’ll bring the whole 
school about our ears. His kind always do air 
their feelings, at night.” The master was 
still convulsed. 

So were the Sons of Rest. So were the 
tittering forms behind a hundred and one pairs 
of awakened eyes peeping furtively out of dor- 
mitory doors. 

But — it was no laughing matter to the visit- 
ing ass. He had been brought there as room- 
mate, and he refused to go — not even with a 
prof acting as burro-puncher, too. 

“Hadn’t I — hadn’t I better try-y him 
with a little garden truck, sir?” suggested 
Dingtoe lamely. 

“Anything! Anything! Why! the whole 
school will be dancing the double-trouble 
presently.” 

But it was the donkey that danced the mid- 

[62] 


ROOM-MATES 


night double-trouble. He tangoed upon two 
legs. He fox-trotted round a chair, planted his 
fore-feet upon it — after an orgy of scraping 
all four hoofs upon the hard pine floor — 
looked solemnly at his biped companions, 
shook his mane, lion-like, and brayed again. 

At long last, with a bunch of dewy carrots 
held before his nose, he ambled downstairs of 
his own accord — not clumsily, he had de- 
scended worse rock-steps than these. 

“Well — well ! of all-11 the wild nights.” 

Wade’s feet, besom-like, brushed the dew 
off the campus in semi-circles, accompanying 
the breathless exclamation, as he led his now 
docile captive across the green, in the direction 
of manger and hay. 

“But — what! Why-y! Well, I’ll be-e 
knock-kneed 1 if-f — if there is n’t somebody 
else making a ‘wild night’ of it, too — abroad, 
too. Now 1 what ’s he up to ? Signaling — 
signaling, as I’m a sinner! Waving a little 
flashlight from the top of that old houseboat 
half-buried amid the scrub-palmetto !” 

The senior paused to watch. 

The donkey stooped to nibble. 

The dark and fragrant violet of the Florida 


[63] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


night was very still, save for the shrill cry of a 
night-hawk as it dived from a height above the 
neighboring Inlet, whose dim waters were a 
liquid blur ! 

“Wowee! He looks — looks as if he were 
signaling off towards Heron Island, s-such a 
bird hive this year ! Countless herons nesting 
there — and some of the rarer bird-species, 
tooP’ 

The senior, acting as burro-puncher, gazed 
now in the direction of a soft, black hump ris- 
ing from the dim, gray surface of Mosquito 
Inlet. 

The sanctuary Inlet which, together with 
fifteen miles of the narrow peninsula on which 
he stood, formed the Bird Reservation where, 
under strong-armed protection, the feather 
folk nested and dwelt in safety; where any 
attack upon them was punishable, not with 
fine only, but with disgrace and imprison- 
ment ! 

‘‘Whew! It smells of sanctuary,” mur- 
mured the donkey driver whimsically to him- 
self, for now a sweet, drowsy bird-call or two 
streaked the odorous air; to think of shot 
and slaughter here — it would seem like 

[64] 


ROOM-MATES 


dynamiting the New Jerusalem, Wade dimly 
felt it. 

He turned his attention again towards the 
faint, ghostly blur that indicated the white 
cabin of the superannuated old houseboat 
looming amid a tangle of tropical ferns and 
the broad-leafed palm-scrub which answered 
to a rising wind with a weird, sighing patter, 
as of heavy rain. 

“Well — well, it’s a small spot in a light- 
ning bug’s tail that shines,” got off the senior 
to himself. “And so with that old houseboat ! 
Dark night, like this, that little niggling flash, 
just shifting from side to side, up and down, 
according to no code, unless it be a private, 
preconcerted signal, could be seen — could be 
seen a long way off ! . . . But who in thunder 
is doing it ? One of the boys ? For a lark ! 
Gee ! if so, I would n’t be in his shoes — not if 
he ’s caught. I — I ’d rather be tied to the 
donkey’s tail — tale — that neither stretched 
nor shrank,” with a snicker. “Those Sons of 
Rest sure have got one on me, conducting a 
wild ass home at midnight !” 

The youth’s feet brushed the dew in wider 
circles. 


[651 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


“Could it be the Scoutmaster? If so, I’d 
spring one on him, but for str-retching the 
donkey’s tale,” laughingly. “That wavy 
palm-scrub, the darkness, prevent my seeing 
whether it ’s a tall figure or a small one stand- 
ing upon the old hulk’s cabin. Well ! if it ’s 
a boy — I’m not telling. But w-what! By 
gracious ! if there is n’t somebody answering 
now, answering with code — Morse code — 
answering fr-rom the dark shores of Heron 
Island.” 

Wade’s excited breath rustled now like the 
crackling scrub. 

“And, by golly! he’s no ‘green’ signaler; 
he sure can shift that light — make it speak. 
Dot, dash, dot! That means acknowledge- 
ment : ‘I ’ve got you !’ Now — now for the 
message ! Two dashes for M : 

“ ‘ M-e-e-t m-e d-a-y-b-r-e-a-k, 
b-e-a-c-h. . . . ’ 

“ Confound you ! there was — there was 
another word, but I lost it. Lost it owing to 
your starting in to bray again, to bray-ay all 
over the campus — you miserable little bone- 
head of a half- wild donkey!” gasped Dana 
Wade, burro-puncher. 


[ 66 ] 


CHAPTER VI 
Sanctuary 

‘ T) Y the Great Annihil-a-ter, 

IJ Half man, half alligator!’ 

the Sachem ’s got back — the bird- 
chief. Back — back from trailing ‘plumers’ 
down at the heart of the Big Cypress 1 ’ Won- 
der if he ’s got wind of any plume-hunters 
around here, trespassing on the Bird Reserva- 
tion, that makes him abroad so early — abroad 
at daybreak?” 

It was Drake who spoke, looking off from 
the little school wharf, on which he stood, at a 
man of powerful build who was patrolling, in 
the queer half-light that comes at dawn, the 
palm-clad shores of Mosquito Inlet. 

“He’s looking over towards Heron Island, 
that swampy jungle, just alive with birds. 
Two thousand herons — and more — nesting 

[67] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ OJP 


there this spring, so the Sachem says, with a 
few of the rarer kinds, ‘ pinks ’ — and snowy 
egrets!’' gasped the Rev. ‘‘But, humph! 
't would be a bold ‘plumer’ who 'd violate 
sanctuary here ; he 'd stand a record chance of 
losing his ‘own plume,’ his poacher’s scalp- 
lock, now the bird-chief ’s got back.” 

“They would n’t try it, if they knew he was 
around,” said Dean. “But he only arrived 
back last night. I heard him telling somebody 
over at the little shanty post office — that 
doting old ebony. Minstrel Bill, I guess it was 
— that he ’d been away — away off in the 
rookery swamps, far south of this, after plume- 
hunters; that he had hoped to land them in 
jail — but, for once, they’d given him the 
slip.” 

“’T is n’t often that anybody can do that 
with the Sachem.” Sharron laughed. It was 
he who had named Boyd Wulf, the Federal 
agent of this feathered-folk reservation, the 
Sachem or big-chief of the bird tribes, seeing 
that he exercised supervision over other bird 
sanctuaries and stray rookeries where rare 
birds nested — hunting the ‘plumers’ who 
would shoot them out for their plumage until 

[68] • 


SANCTUARY 


not a bird remained — even down into the 
wilds of the Big Cypress. 

“No, it is n't often that poachers can out- 
wit him," said Drake. “The Scoutmaster 
says he 's the most finished woodsman he ever 
saw. Can slip around in any jungle of swamp 
or pine-barren ! And he 's on to the plume- 
hunters, the fellows who would shoot out a 
rookery of nesting birds for the aigrettes or 
wings, to supply the millinery trade," with a 
boyish shrug, “ before ever they know he 's 
around. Sometimes he mingles with 'em as 
a tourist. Sometimes he takes possession of 
one of their camps and, armed to the teeth, 
gives 'em a surprise party — gee ! would n't 
I like to come in on that ambush?" 

“That — that's why they hate him so," 
said the Rev, “and are so keen to know his 
whereabouts — if they can." 

“Well! the Scoutmaster says that we, as 
scouts, ought to cooperate with him all we can 
to protect the bird-life ; the beauties — rare 
beauties — have been so nearly wiped out. 
Not that that got us up so early this — windy 
— morning!" Drake grinned. “It was the 
feeling that if we waited for the rising bell, 

[69] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


big feet would be laying for us, with an axe, 
in the corridor/* 

“Hoo-rah-i ! We *ve given ’em the slip, and 
Wade is snoring peacefully after his wild night, 
dr-reaming of his long-eared room-mate.” Dean 
yawned. “But how — how are we to put in 
the hours until the bell rings ; that *s the r-rub ? ” 

“I’m hollow as a graven image, already.” 
The Rev sadly stroked his waist-line. “And, 
gee, if this is a land of milk an’ honey for the 
birds, it ’s a beggarly beat for humans. Not 
even an ice-cream cone to be had in all the 
length and breadth of sanctuary ! Sanctuary 
— shucks ! Small comfort it will be to us to 
watch the multitudes feeding on the bar, at 
low tide!” gazing off at a brown sand-bar 
amid the choppy Inlet waves, over which 
birds of all kinds were hovering. “A stuck-up 
mob, too — some of ’em 1 I ’ve watched ’em 
nearby — the stately families that pride them- 
selves upon their crest,” with a hollow chuckle, 
“snapping their bills at the riff-raff, if they 
come too near ; at the sand-pipers, yellow-legs 
and plover.” 

“And at the chunked little herring-gulls!” 
laughed Dean. “I say — I say, fellows, how 

[70 1 


SANCTUARY 


about ‘putting’ for the beach — that wonder 
of an ocean beach, south side of the peninsula ; 
gee ! the surf would be ripping this morning.” 

“You couldn’t keep your feet there, in this 
wind. You ’d have only one leg to stand upon 
— and that blown away ! ” The Rev’s chuckle 
was blown from his lips ; even here the norther 
was batting him like a cork — here on the 
sheltered Inlet side of the sanctuary penin- 
sula. 

“’T won’t be so-o much worse there than 
here ; I ’m for the beach an’ some show for our 
money — our ear-rly rising!” Dean yawned 
again. “Oh, boy! old Time will nev-er get 
over the killing that m-must be done on him 
before the bell rings.” There is only one bell 
needing no qualifying adjective to hungry 
schoolboys ; and that, at this morning hour, 
meant cocoa and corn-pone. “Let’s watch 
the crowd lining up for mess upon that long 
sand-bar, and then — and then head for the 
beach ! There — there go the gray Loosies 
now, filing off from Heron Island — that 
bird-hive — see !” 

Yes, the shores of the thickly wooded islet 
from which Wade had seen a message flashed 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


only a few hours before, at midnight, were 
teeming with waking bird-life now. 

In its jungle of semi-tropical foliage, where 
morning glories and ten-foot ferns climbed the 
cypress trees, and the red mangrove, whose 
northern limit is Mosquito Inlet, threw out its 
interlacing aerial roots, there was an ideal 
nesting place for thousands of birds, shyer 
than the bold Loosies, Louisiana herons, with 
their gray and worthless neck-plumes. 

Herons — herons of every description, from 
the great blue to the little blue and green, were 
stalking those island shores now. One by one, 
they were taking flight for old Neptune's mess- 
counter, the distant sand-bar. 

The Rev, who sported a merit badge for 
bird study, suddenly chortled and gasped. 

“ Riprah ! Hurrah ! There — there goes 
the American egret — the ‘long white,' as the 
Indians call it!" he proclaimed excitedly, 
edging oflF from the spray-lashed wharf into 
some scrub palmetto near by, the better to 
watch the flight of the wonderful “long 
white," a species of heron. 

“Gee! isn't it a beaut'?" he panted. 
“Don't those fifty, or more, back plumes 

[72] 


SANCTUARY 


streaming out over its tail go — whew ! aren’t 
they the limit against the patent leather 
polish of its black feet and legs 

“He’s about as handsome as they make 
’em” responded Drake, as the other two 
boys followed into the green and brown pal- 
metto, keeping close to the roughened Inlet 
waters. 

“No-o, he isn’t ! There goes the lily of the 
sanctuary — the snowy egret,” half-whispered 
Dean. “ She is n’t so showy as the other — 
but, wow ! is n’t she a snowdrop ? The Sachem 
said he thought there were a couple of them 
nesting upon the island.” 

And now was, indeed, the moment when it 
snowed birds — white birds — above the In- 
let bars, for the white ibis was arriving in 
flocks, with its black-tipped wings, its orange- 
red legs and face, which had once tempted a 
waif down an embankment, to his undoing. 

But even yet the beauty prize was not 
awarded by those three early risers among the 
wildly tossing palm-leaves. 

It was the Rev who bestowed it — suddenly 
bestowed it by the glisten on his cheeks, the 
day-dawn exultation in his eyes. 

[73] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“ A ‘ Pink ’ ! - he cried. “ Oh-h ! the ‘ Pinks ’ 
are coming back to sanctuary — coming back 
to sanctuary here. And there are so few — so 
few of them left !” 

Well might he beam ! His companions too ! 
The bird which passed them now — flying 
quite near — was a fitting inmate of sanctuary. 
In the pale primrose light he was white as a 
glorified choir-boy, with a matchless blush in 
his wings. 

“ He is a winner. The pink curlew — roseate 
spoonbill — ** Drake began — then suddenly 
broke off, as if a feather from the winner’s 
wing had choked him. 

There was a sound from the palmetto in 
front of them — the waving, shrieking, broad- 
leaved fans. 

It struck them like a sob, that choking 
sound — but it was transfigured like the wings 
of the ‘‘Pink.” 

A sob such as a little mud-lark might give, 
who, hunting in the mire, had sighted heavenly 
treasure through a chink ! 

With a sweep of his long arm Drake leaned 
over a low sand-mound, beyond which the 
fanning scrub grew thin, and jerked to his feet 

[74] 


SANCTUARY 


a small boy, with a head as primrose as the 
dawn-light. 

“Well, by the powers of mud T* he gasped. 
“What are you doing here, at this hour, you 
little bonehead? You queer Neff! Is this 
another of your funny curves ? ’ Gee ! you ’d 
better ‘ cut quick sticks ’ back to bed, you little 
Wastrel — wasting the time when you ought 
to be asleep. Such — s-such a wild morning, 
too ! It ’s different with us. We 're seniors 1" 

But the waif did not seem to know who was 
haranguing him — it might have been merely 
the nor' wester. 

“I — I saw him!" he cried — and on his 
thin features there was a glory that quite sur- 
passed the Rev's. “Oh-h 1 I did n't move one 
bit of me — only my eyes. And he — he was 
the most wonderful bird that — ever — I 

I ” 

saw 1 

“Was he, indeed?" snapped Drake tartly. 
“But lower-form boys like you, raw new kids, 
are n't supposed to be up and out at break o' 
day — especially when they work hard, too, 
as ‘kitchen mechanics,'" with a shake. 
“You've broken about half-a-dozen rules; 
d' you know it ?" 


t75l 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“He was all pink an’ silver — silver an’ 
pink — and there was a rose in his wings?” 
sobbed the kitchen mechanic. 

“Are you just plain crazy — or — or-r — ” 

Drake never knew afterwards whether it was 
at that moment that an idea came to him — 
or, rather, the mere wing-case that held it. 

Something — a delirious something — was 
playing bo-peep with him, within. A vision, 
was it ? If so, it had not a leg to go upon ! 
Nothing but that unformed wing ! But he had 
a subtle feeling that if ever it got that wing 
free, it might outdo the wildest flight of any 
bird upon the Inlet. 

Instinctively he buttoned upon it. 

“You — you ’re no quick — study,” he hissed 
between his teeth, looking into the Wastrel’s 
face with all the wildness of the nor’wester. 
“You certainly have got some queer ‘curves’ ; 
and this stealing oflF by yourself, to watch the 
birds and the snakes an’ the little lizards — 
whew ! — is one of them. You have n’t 
played much with the other boys, have you ? 
But you ’d lie on a swamp-edge until you took 
root, to see a little chameleon shoot a fly with 
his tongue — so the science teacher said yes- 


[76I 


SANCTUARY 


terday. Well ! now, as you are up, you ’re 
coming on to the beach with us. You ’ll see 
some more birds there !” 

But the Wastrel — he could not have been 
a month in the school without acquiring a 
nickname and this was softer than “ the Waif” 
— struggled, struggled surprisingly now — 
and his face was as wild as the north-wester’s 
which stood his hair on end like rampant flax. 

“I — I don’t want to go to the beach,” he 
cried. ‘‘ I w-was going — b-but I won’t ! 
I ’ll go back to bed. I — we — some of us 
have got to be up — up-p — before the rising 
bell, you know, to help Mutso, to fetch water 
from the spring an’ — an’ other things — an’ 
if we ’re not spry, he says — says that it ’s 
like pounding r-rice with a paper hammer — ” 
The boy was babbling wildly — and in fear. 
“Pshaw! You look about ’s unlucky as a 
dog in church 1 Ha 1 And — and we all know 
Mutso, that dandy Jap chef — that he just 
‘ babies ’ you, says you ’re the only boy-helper 
he has — among the kitchen mechanics as you 
call yourselves — who ’s worth his rice. But 
you are coming to the beach with us — be- 
cause I say sol” It was the senior martinet 

[77l 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


breaking out in Drake. “I don't believe 
you 'd go back to bed. And if I hear another 
‘yawp' out of you, I 'll let " — the wind was 
whipping the words — “ the Locaridian So- 
ciety give you the worst ‘paddling' a new kid 
— ever — got. They say we — we of the 
Agora Society have been babying you, too." 

“Oh-h! please — " began the quaking 
Wastrel. 

But his merciless captor had him by the ear, 
was leading him — dragging him — through 
the scrub palmetto and tangle of tall ferns. 

A barred owl hooted at them from a sanc- 
tuary stump : “ Come on ; I am not afraid of 
you ! " he said. 

But for one half-whimpering, wind-whipped 
boy there was no sanctuary. 

Over and over, now that he was no longer 
hypnotized by the “Pink," the baby tempest 
was mercilessly shrieking something at him: 
“Meet me — daybreak — Dyke! Meet me, 
daybreak, — beach — Dyke 1 " 

“I — I wanted to stay up!" moaned his 
shot heart in answer. “Oh 1 I wanted to stay 
up — and go str-raight. But he won't let me, 
with his game of feathers ; he says I 've got to 

[78] 


SANCTUARY 


keep in with him and keep him posted — 
posted as to where the badger chaser, as he 
calls Boyd Wulf, is. Says he chased him out o* 
the Big Cypress ! Oh-h ! if only he had n’t 
run on to me when I went to the spring, just 
’ night before last.” 

It was the sob of violated sanctuary — the 
sanctuary which this poor “curved” waif had 
found. 

Over and over, as he followed the wild road 
across the peninsula in Drake’s grip, past the 
tall lighthouse around which the gulls and 
terns circled, past the Devil’s Bedchamber 
where a belted kingfisher sprung his rattle and 
hissed mannishly, he saw flashed upon him 
again from the shore of Heron Island the 
doom of the signaled message — the code 
which his former pal had taught him to under- 
stand : 

“Meet me, daybreak. Dyke’ Meet me, 
daybreak, beach — Dyke !” 


CHAPTER VII 


A New Bird 

“ and there — there goes the ‘ rookie/ 

J \ late for mess, as usual !’* 

“He's not ‘going' at all. He's 
fishing where he is, digging his claws into the 
sands, to anchor his slender legs. " 

“Hip! Hip! If he isn't the prince — 
the Sanctuary prince — that soldier heron!" 

The triple homage came from the Sons of 
Rest, as they reached the wind-whipped ocean 
beach. For them, the three schoolboys, soon 
to be parted by graduation. Life in its jolly 
phases was for the most part a triple affair; 
they made of it a three-leafed clover — a 
lucky clover. 

“ I told you you 'd see something worth 
while here — you ‘curvy' Wastrel!" Drake 
pinched his captive's ear which he still held. 


A NEW BIRD 


“That soldier heron stands four feet tall in 
his stockings. Is n't he a splendid Yank 

But the fires in the Wastrel's breast were 
deadened now — deadened by the thought of 
the one-time pal who Ayas probably spying 
upon him, waiting for him, among the ragged 
sand-hills near by. 

“He 's really the Florida Ward's heron," 
said the Rev. “That other is only a nick- 
name. But he looks military, does n't he, so 
slim and tall, in his gray-blue uniform, with 
his olive-green legs and crested head. And he 
is n't a quitter, either. Here — here you 
may come quite close to him before he 'll take 
the tr-rouble to fly. . . . Don't believe 
he even made way for Murphy when he s-set 
the record in automobiling he-ere!" 

The Rev was screeching against the blast. 
No doubt, the soldier heron did not hear him. 
He stood like a statue at the ripples' edge and 
watched the green walls of water break a few 
yards away from him. In the battle roar of 
the tempest he seemed to have forgotten even 
the morning skirmish for rations — fishy 
rations. 

“This — this is the most famous beach in 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


the world — shrimp. ” Drake shrieked it into 
the ear he held — but not for the first time. 
“It runs forty miles from ’city of Daytona — 
broad, white highway, at low tide ! It ’s here 
you ’ll see the automobile races. Sorre — 
speed ! Get — that ? ” 

“The 'Rookie’ has umpired them often, I 
guess !” boomed Deanie. “Hea-vens ! what 
surf! If you stood a meadow on end — an’ 
banked it with white — ” 

“And gave it a thunder in every thistle 1 ” 
whistled the Rev. 

“Then you’d have it!” shrieked Drake. 
“Or, rather, you would n’t have it, for 
’t would be here one moment — crumbling the 
next. What — are you shivering for. Waif? 
We ’re not going to dr-rown you. Look at 
the heron, how steady on his pins he is 1” 

“He — he hears something!” volleyed the 
Rev, for the bird’s crested head was suddenly 
on the alert — his weather eye lifting. “Ye 
gods ! Why did n’t we hear it before ? New 
bird — a new bird, seeking sanctuary ! ” 

“And he needs it too! ’Don’t — you 
don’t mean to say it’s a 'buzzer’ — army 
aeroplane from Arcadia fields — flies over so 


A NEW BIRD 


often ! ** The startled whoop came from the 
other two older boys together. 

The three pairs of eyes were turned upward 
now, to the gray sky, just streaked with 
rose and primrose — above the towering 
waves. 

Even the Wastrel was jostled out of his 
fear — his doom — the thought of what, who, 
was waylaying him among the dunes. 

But the heron stood, statuesque as ever, at 
his watery outpost. He had seen this Titan 
of a bird fly over often before, with the legs of 
the wind in its rushing — noisy — wings. 

He was not disturbed by it now. He had 
not taken umbrage at Murphy — or at 
Milton — when they broke the world’s record 
in automobiling here. 

He never forgot that this matchless speed- 
way was sanctuary. 

The new bird above, the Thunder Bird, 
seemed anxious to make sanctuary of it, too. 
From jockeying, rather wildly, over the sea, 
he suddenly pointed down towards the gleam- 
ing sands. 

“He is going to make a landing here. 
B-blown out of his course, I guess, that army 

[83] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


aviator ! Gosh ! I w-would n’t like to be up 
there — with — him. So ear-rly in the 
m-morning — too ! 

Oh ! early morning it was — when something 
happened which neither the feathered soldier, 
nor the three clammy-cold boys ever quite 
understood, so swift it was, so hapless — so 
terrible. Something which snuffed out their 
puny cries — snuffed out their very breath, 
as a spent candle before the blaze of a wicked 
day. 

On high it was a downward swoop, an upset- 
ting gust — a crash ! And the foam, the 
little thin wisps of outer foam, playing over 
the broken wings of a bird-man — over his 
body lying in a coffin of sand ! 

And the heron, motionless as ever, looked on 
at the wreck of the other soldier ! 

Something in his mute pose — the stretched 
neck — seemed saying : “Well ! that Thunder 
Bird was nt so invincible as I thought. Give 
me my own wings 1 ’’ 

The human observers were not invincible, 
either. For one moment they were dazed — 
bowed. For one moment the whole wild 
ocean was pouring over them, drowning, 

[84] 


A NEW BIRD 

suffocating, trampling out their breath — a 
horrible zero sea it seemed ! 

And then — then they were in a furnace, a 
reeking furnace ! But it burned their bonds. 
Out of it came some gold — true scout 
gold ! 

“There's one — one in the water!" The 
surf has got himT* 

But, fighting like maniacs, they were upon 
the surf, the green livid surf, frothing at the 
lips, but only four feet deep here — where it 
got its paw on the body of a second aviator, in 
the maelstrom of a receding wave. 

It was a life and death tussle to fight it even 
so — for its dragging clutch was so strong. 
Life and death for them 1 Life and death for a 
broken-limbed man, whose body was a reed in 
its savage grip. 

But they were scouts, scouts trained to the 
meaning of “The Quick or the Dead," in an 
emergency 1 Scouts who each held a merit 
badge for life-saving! 

Somehow, they got him out — out on to the 
sands which already coffined his comrade. 
And the body of the aeroplane, too — for 
both had sunk deep into them. 

I85] 


drake and the adventurers* cup 


At the last spinning, plunging moment two 
had jumped, — both pilot and observer. 

It was the observer whom the boys were 
dragging ashore. 

The pilot had crossed the bar. 

They dug him out feverishly and tried to 
revive him. But — 

“He 's flown his last,” said Drake. 

And, with that, silently as a winging soul, 
the soldier heron flew too. 


1861 


CHAPTER VIII 
Feathers 

O NLY two cardinal-birds drinking at 
the bird-bath with the gray squir- 
rels ! On other mornings I Ve counted 
as many as six/’ said the Wastrel to himself as 
he took his way to a distant wood-pile, to fetch 
kindling-wood for Mutso. 

He paused to look at the gray ‘‘bath,” the 
great-wooden bowl upon its supporting pillar, 
rising out of the odorous tangle of ferns and 
palmetto, with climbing air-plants, where the 
gorgeous blossoms of the wild pineapple, red, 
yellow and blue, twined itself around the 
trunks of trees. 

The air was filled with the perfume of an 
orange grove nearby. Sunlit golden globes 
challenged him from among the glossy, dark 

[87] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


leaves. Waxen blossoms blew him a kiss as the 
breeze swept by them. 

“Gee, if this isn't a dose of the balmy!" 
murmured the Wastrel, reverting to his old 
vagabond slang, as his glance flitted after an 
orange sulphur butterfly, golden as the fruit, 
glossy as the leaves, hovering upon the margin 
of the grove. 

“I guess that fellow is newly hatched out 
from the orange puppy, the fat caterpillar 
which the science teacher showed me stretched 
out upon a twig, where he feeds upon the 
young leaves — lucky pup 1" beamed the boy, 
his interest in Nature and all her doings, in this 
her wonder world, welling up from a deep well 
of delight within him. 

“This is n't swiping." He picked up an 
orange. “ I would n't prig even fruit here. 
But kids may have the windfalls." 

Removing a disc of skin with a knife which 
Drake had given him, he swung the great 
basket upon his arm, sucking and whistling 
alternately, as he pursued his way, with one 
eye on the bird-bath. 

Under the lilac sky of Florida, looking at this 
early morning hour as if the clouds were laven- 


[ 88 ] 


FEATHERS 


der sprigs which had been laid away in Night’s 
dark coffer and shaken out, fresh, at dawn, 
gleamed a flame more exquisite still, the blush 
of a cardinal’s wing, as one of the birds flew off 
— singing. 

From a “booted” cabbage palm, near by, 
a mocker caught up the whistling note. 

“Ha! That mocking bird sounded reveille 
at daybreak, imitating Jenny Wren, the talka- 
tive little Florida wren which has built in the 
school eaves — and wakes us with her fussy 
whistle an’ her ‘Tea-kettle! Tea-Kettle!’” 
thought the boy. “Wah Hoo ! Wah-whoo- 
hoo ! There — there he goes now, making be- 
lieve he ’s a barred owl — hooting !” 

Reflected mimicry bubbled in the boyish 
throat, widely gasping, as the boyish glance 
searched among the broad fans of the portly 
cabbage palm, with its branches spreading out 
from the fibrous brackets, or boots, for the 
feathered impersonator of the gray coat and 
soiled white waistcoat, the versatile mocking- 
bird. 

“Wow ! Jerry Juniper ! If he is n’t begin- 
ning on the ducks now — the wild ducks call- 
ing from the Inlet, so tame that they ’ll feed 

[89] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


from the Sachem’s hand, big chief s hand. 
Oh ! if I were only hirriy Cap Wulf, and could 
be turned loose for a while among the birds, 
nothing to do but watch ’em, then I ’d learn 
something about them — really. About the 
little lightning lizards, too ! Gee ! yes, an’ the 
snakes — oh ! that beauty of a nine-foot 
gopher we saw ’ day before yesterday — blue- 
black an’ shone like glass. When I grow up 
I’ll build me a palmetto shack — ” Neff 
drowned his day-dream in the golden heart of 
the windfall orange. “Well ! I must look alive 
or Mutso won’t say I ’m the only one among 
his boy-helpers, ‘kitchen mechanics,’ who 
does n’t make him feel as if he was pounding 
rice with a paper hammer.” 

With a complacent laugh the Wastrel made 
for the wood-pile, — a couple of hundred 
yards from the school, whose logs the boys 
themselves had chopped — those who were 
fortunate enough to have their way paid for 
them, as well as the self-styled “mechanics,” 
who polished knives, or in other ways helped the 
chef, paying their own footing in whole or part. 

And, as Neff recalled in a flurry, the excit- 
able Jap was at his wits’ end this morning. 


FEATHERS 


A strange cloud hung over the school on the 
Inlet. The injured aviator lay there, where he 
had been carried from the beach, only yester- 
day morning. 

The scouts had formed a guard of honor and 
escorted to the same temporary shelter the one 
who would fly no more, the Scoutmaster and 
the three older boys who had witnessed the 
accident bearing him. And no scout passed the 
room where he lay without saluting. 

Upon the school flagstaflF the flag was at half- 
mast. 

Relatives and friends of the victims were 
arriving — some of them more aviators from 
the Arcadia fields, the Florida flying fields. 

The Jap chef had turned all his helpers 
out early, was keeping them busy as bees in 
a tar-barrel, and NeflF had been despatched 
to this distant wood-pile for fuel reinforce- 
ments. 

It stood, the gray stack of resinous light- 
wood and slower firewood, on the skirts of a 
little hammock, or timbered hillock, to the 
right of which was a swamp where small cy- 
presses and sweet-gum trees were shrouded in 
gray moss to the topmost twig — where trail- 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


ing Virginia creeper and scuppermong grape- 
vine made a pale green screen. 

“Whe-ew! It reminds me of that queer 
swamp at the foot of the old embankment 
where the ' rattler/ the train, dropped me — 
only the mud is black/* murmured Neff, hurl- 
ing chunks of the pine-wood and rosy red- 
mangrove into his basket. 

Of a sudden the ruddy heart-wood of that 
mangrove — the tree whose northern limit 
was the ground on which he stood — seemed 
to be drawing all the blood from his own heart. 

Out of the crinkly, leafy screen a head was 
thrust — a voice he knew was speaking to him. 

“Hullo there! pal/* it said. “Well! you 
durned little shrimp, why did you ‘stick me 
up* yesterday morning? Why did n*t you 
meet me, as I signaled you to do ?** 

“Dyke!** faltered the boy. “Dy-ykel I 
had to disappoint you.** Already there was a 
difference between the language of the school- 
boy and that of the sneak-thief. 

“Well! I suppose so. I know what hap- 
pened at daybreak on the beach. I was watch- 
ing from *mong the sand-hills when the ‘buz- 
zer* came down. I *d ha’ gone to help — I’m 

[ 92 ] 


FEATHERS 


not a ‘stony’ — only for the fear that that 
durned Wulf, the Warden o’ this chicken 
reservation and others — ” the speaker glanced 
over the bird sanctuary — “might spot me. 
He has eyes in the back of his head where 
‘ plumers ’ are concerned — an’ he ’s gen’rally 
on to ’em afore they know it.” 

“Well! I signaled to you the night before 
last — signaled with a flashlight — by the 
number of flashes you told me, that he was 
h-here,” shivered the boy. 

“Yes, you stood by well that time, kid; if 
you had n’t done so, I might have tried a shot 
or two over on Heron Island — some rare uns 
among the birds there — then he ’d have had 
‘my plume.’ Well 1 I ’ll wolj him yet, or his 
precious bird rookeries. He chased us out 
o’ the Big Cypress, so that we had to beat 
it further north, to carry on our feather 
game.” 

The Wastrel’s teeth clicked. 

“Gosh! Yes. He’s the one you have to 
look out for. Slickest of all the ‘badger- 
chasers’ he is! Pretty near landed us in jail 
down at Fort Myers ! You ’ve got to go on 
keeping me posted, kid — posted as to his 

l93l 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


whereabouts so far as you know it. His house 
is neighbor to the school — fine school you Ve 
landed in now !'* 

“I — I could n’t/' faltered the boy. “ I 
took big chances the other night, standing 
out on that old houseboat, waving a glim. 
D-did n’t I freeze when a donkey brayed i If 
’twas found out, I ’d be ditched.” 

“And I tell you you’ll be ditched — 
dropped — if you don’t ! Did n’t you get that 
into your idea-pot when I ran on to you last 
week at the spring, where you were stretched 
out, at your old ‘curves,’ still as death — 
watching something?” 

“’T was — ’twas a little chameleon.” Mo- 
mentarily NefFs face was transfigured. “He 
was brown — he was green ; he was here — he 
was there; before you could even spot him. 
The science teacher — ” 

“Pshaw! An’ you turned greener ’n the 
chameleon when I had the luck to spot you.” 

“‘Luck!’” The boy glanced miserably 
around. The birds had a sanctuary, but 
not he. 

“Well ! here we ar-re, wasting precious mo- 
ments, as the villain said in ‘The Wild Eye of 

[94I 


FEATHERS 


Grit’ when he was about to finish the other 
one. Remember that movie play, kiddo 

NefF nodded into the cunning eye in the face 
of a young, rather good-looking man thrust 
out from the Scuppermong screen. 

“Hum-m. You an’ I have had some good 
times together since you skipped Torn that 
Dutchy farmer. And now — now — you ’ve 
got to do something else for me besides keep- 
ing me posted about that long-armed Warden. 
You’re to slip these two ‘smooth’ boxes, 
nicely done up in brown paper, inside o’ that 
loose khaki shirt of yours an’ mail ’em by’n-by 
for me at the little shanty post office on the 
Inlet. If anyone cross-kids you about the con- 
tents, you ’re to say it ’s a little souvenir 
you ’re sending up North to — to some little 
girl you ’re sweet on — anybody — see ?” 

“What is in them ?” The Wastrel drew back 
suspiciously ; he had an instinct that in touch- 
ing those foot-long boxes he would be touching 
pitch, as well as plumes — and so be defiled, 
with the hideous smear of disloyalty. 

“What’s that to you? Well! let it be a 
‘fair shake’ between us two 1 1 ’ll tell you — ” 
Dyke smiled craftily — “it ’s just a few 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


feathers, aigrettes an’ wings, ’most worth 
their weight in gold with the northern milli- 
ners, that my pal — ” 

“Fellow you dropped me for, on the train !” 

“Pshaw! I like that. You dropped your- 
self. I knew you *d land on your feet an’ fol- 
low along, somehow. Well 1 ’bout the nobby 
plumes, we got ’em in a rookery swamp south 
o’ this, where the egrets still ‘rook’ an’ the 
moccasins hang upon the cypress knees so 
thick that it ’s hard to keep above snakes,” 
with a shivery laugh. 

“If ’twas found out, we ’d spend a few 
moons in jail — laws against shooting of egret 
birds is so strict that you hardly dare set in a 
rookery,” went on the lawless plume-hunter. 
“We must keep under the bushes, even about 
mailing ’em. But no one will suspect a school- 
boy like you.” 

A schoolboy like him 1 For a month he had 
been a clean-hearted schoolboy. The Wastrel 
licked his dry lips. 

“Shucks! You needn’t shake to your 
roots, kid. It ’s only a little thing.” 

“‘Little !’ I won’t mail ’em, those feathers. 
. . . Nothing do-ing!” 

[96] 


FEATHERS 

“You won’t, eh? See that? Remember 
that ?” 

“Oh ! yes. Gee-ee, yes ! It — it ’s my pic- 
ture, the torn old photograph found in my 
father’s pocket after he was run over by an 
automobile. Not of him — so they told me at 
the Home ! But I — I thought the world of it ! 
An’ I let you have it, to keep for me. Oh ! 
Dykie — give it back — ” 

“Not until you promise to mail those 
boxes ! ” 

“ I never — will. Even the fellows ud ditch 
me. They ’re down on ‘ plumers ’ in this sanc- 
tuary.” 

Dyke’s right arm shot out savagely. 

“You ’d better look out or — or you and I 
will be slipping into each other,” he threatened. 

“You dare n’t touch me here — B-bully !” 

“ B-bul-i^-y ” shrieked suddenly an aveng- 
ing voice from the woodland near, so wild, so 
startling an echo of the boy’s, in its shrill 
creak of mingled terror and defiance, that the 
man simply froze. 

“Bul-bul-^«/^.' Murder’s out! Mur-rder’s 
ou-out I Whe-eu ! Ha! Ha! Ha!” mocked 
the voice again, with demoniacal laughter. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


“Great Scott! is it devil- wood — that 
hammock 

Little cold beads of sweat stood out upon 
Dyke’s forehead. He was in a tense state, 
just now, in momentary dread of surprise 
by Wulf, the dreaded Warden, or one of his 
emissaries. 

A malicious little grin twisted the Wastrel’s 
lips. He bit it in two. 

“ I tell you, I won’t have anything to do with 
your old boxes,” he repeated boldly. 

“ Con-found-ed lit- tie cuss! Just you 
w-wait — ” 

“ W-wait ! Cuss ! Cuss-ss ! Ha ! Ha ! 
Mur-r-der’s out. ‘Over-r There!’” screamed 
the ambushed voice again. 

There followed a crudely whistled bar or 
two of the latter tune. 

Dyke dripped clammily. Life has a strange 
way of knocking things together and hitting 
the sore spot. His right hand — it was the left 
that tendered the boxes — throttled the grape- 
vine. 

“Well — well ! I guess I’ 11 beat it back to 
the school now — and leave you with your 
new company. Don’t fa-ade away — quite !” 

[98] 


FEATHERS 


Had the schoolboy promptly suited action to 
the word, made a lightning escape at the mo- 
ment, he might have “got away with it/’ 

Boy-like, he lingered to guy the enemy. 

“Ha! Hal Burn the willies! Mail your 
own feathers y' he cried. 

“ F-feather^^M ” guyed, too, the goblin voice 
from the hammock, fumbling over the new 
word. “Whe-eu! Whe-eu ! Whe-eu ! Oh, 
Boy! . . . Mur-rder’s out. Feath^ — ” 

Dyke, the imaginative Dyke, the movie 
fiend, who had once talked strangely about 
plucking rich quills from a wild-goose chase 
down in the Big Cypress — of a story that 
might prove stranger than “The Wild Eye 
of Grit” — Dyke looked as if he didn’t 
know where his heels were and where his 
head. 

But with the leap of a tiger his savage wiU 
reasserted itself. 

‘'Well ! I don’t care what ghost of a bird ^ 
or any other thing — is roosting in that infer- 
nal wood,” he panted. “You ’ve got to mail 
the stuff, or — or face what ’s coming to you — 
you Neff!” 

“You-ou Neff! Neff-ff !” It was a wildly 

[99I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


gleeful burst from the stump orator near. 
“Oh-h! You Neff, give Jokie his breakfast. 
Tokie, Jokie. Jokie ^ Neff! Whe-eu ! Whe-eu ! 
Whe-eul Mur-r — ” 

Why ! by the lord Harry, it ’s only a par- 
rot, after all. I did n’t think one could be so — 
human.'’ 

Yes ! the trained parrot that lives, free, in 
the sanctuary woods. The boys taught him to 
talk an’ whistle. Gen'rally he calls for his — 
breakfast — at this hour.” 

But — but the answer was a stony sob. 
x\gain the Wastrel was feeling that there was 
no sanctuary for him, as he pointed through 
the ghostly veil of gray moss draping a live oak 
at a brilliant flash of green and red plumage, 
with the pearl of a bald crown, where the wood- 
land Joker climbed the trunk, taking hold with 
claws and beak. 

“ See there — there ! He — he stops to 
scratch his head with his hand that has a 
feather in it,” mumbled the boy, furtively 
edging off* with his full basket. 

But Dyke — Dyke was his savage self 
again. 

“Here! Hold on 1 Not much 1 No pata- 
[ loo] 


FEATHERS 


trot — runaway — act for you — till you swear 
to mail these boxes ! ” he softly raged. “ If you 
don’t, why ! I ’ll let the Richmond police know 
to-day that you ’re the boy who, with another 
one, tipped over that banana man’s cart two 
months ago an’ stole the money hidden under 
it. They sent Rocky Wood to a reform school 
where they set about him with a strap ev’ry 
day. You got off, because — ” 

“ ’T was you — you — who made us do it,” 
gnashed the boy. “I didn’t want to! I — 
I ’ll tell ’em that you ’re a deserter — that ’s 
why ‘Over There’ — ” 

“You little devil! I ’ll kidnap you yet — 
an’ set-tie with you.” 

“ Dev-il ! Set-tie ! Polly ! Whe-eu ! 
Whe-eu ! Whe-eu ! Oh ! you Neff, give 
Jokie a cracker,” wheedled the oak-tree sprite 
again. 

“ Aw, well ! if I must, I must.” The waif felt 
Jokie’s woodland madness in his own brain. 
“Chuck ’em to me. My picture, too! 
They ’re only a few feathers, anyhow.” 

But he looked like dead feathers as he 
padded his slim body inside the khaki shirt 
with those cardboard boxes. 


[ loi] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


He was a waif again — he knew it. 

Always a waif now, because he was a 
traitor ! 

Henceforth the sanctuary was but a shell 
for him. 


CHAPTER IX 


O’ 


The Sand-Sailer 

boy! Give me breeze — or give me 
Death !*’ 

"‘Breeze enough presently! Br-reeze 
to blow the hair off your head, I 'll wager!" 
So Drake answered Dana Wade, alias Dingtoe, 
skipper of the Wild Goose — huge sand-sailer 
— who was shuffling his “feet almighty" upon 
the broad, white beach. 

“Those tall sand-hills to the right rather 
blanket our wind in a land-breeze like this — 
but wait till we strike a gap in them, then — 
then see her get it full in a puff, a squall, that 'll 
make her flicker and rear ! Then heaven have 
mercy on the ballast — the human ballast ! " 
added the red-haired scout devoutly, his “gin- 
ger head, topper gay," flaming, the wildest 
beacon. 


[ 103) 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


“Well! she is a queer cross-breed — mon- 
grel yacht r' Wade chuckled as he examined 
his fish-shaped Wild Goose. “ But I guess she 
can ‘set a gait' all right, make any thorough- 
bred craft that ever sailed, with the water's 
drag on her, look like a sea-snail — as she clips 
it over the beach." 

He was fingering the coaming as he spoke, 
the snow-white coaming of the after cockpit, 
for there were two of them, oblong boxes 
perched athwart the mighty backbone, or 
centre-beam of the sand-sailer, the mongrel 
yacht on wheels, and clinging there like 
wasps' nests to a beam. 

“The Wild Goose is lighter of heel than the 
challenger," appraised her skipper. “The 
Pelican's stern, if you may call it so," he 
looked at the long “sailer" to be raced by the 
Blount School, “isn't trimmed down quite so 
fine." 

“She has a peach of a mast, though, the 
Pelican," said Drake, sole crew of the Wild 
Goose. “It must measure nineteen feet to 
our eighteen. Whew 1 Quite a spar 1 Her 
wheels — three wheels — are a shade higher, 
too." 


[ 104] 


THE SAND-SAILER 


“Well, the Wild Goose never laid a tame 
egg,” exulted Wade. “ She has made her fifty 
an hour in a wild wind — before now — along 
this dandy beach, when I Ve sailed her.” 

Both young men were now going over with 
the trained eye of the ice-boat racer every 
detail of the great sand-sailer built somewhat 
on the same plan, with her rakish mast up for- 
ward in the eyes of the “boat,” forward of one 
cockpit situated upon the axle-bar, or runner 
plank, connecting the two front wheels. 

This it was which would contain the long- 
suffering human ballast, a couple of boys 
whose combined heavyweights would make up 
three hundred pounds or so. 

Ten feet aft of this forward nest was the 
stern cockpit, balanced right over the rear 
wheel by which the “mongrel” was steered — 
the rudder-post, with its yard-long iron tiller, 
running right up through that. 

On the great wing of the Wild Goose, the 
huge mainsail, not yet unfurled, that would 
spread some five hundred square feet of thick 
duck to the breeze, was emblazoned the Maun- 
sert colors, the crimson and the gray, while 
Blount of the blue sported a sapphire emblem. 

[ 105] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


The two schools, both having their winter 
semester in the sunny south, were to compete 
over a two-legged course, fifteen miles, fifteen 
back, in one of those informal athletic events 
sometimes pulled off between them. 

‘‘ ’T was good of you to single me out for 
‘crew,’ to tend the maimsheet — the little 
jib-sheet being belayed,’’ acknowledged Drake 
gratefully, looking at his tall skipper — and 
mindful of the donkey’s tale that neither 
stretched nor shrank. 

“I wouldn’t — only you’re such a shark 
at sailing !” came a frank mumble. 

“But you should have invited your hairy 
room-mate down to give you a send-off!” 

“Pshaw! everyone must wear out one pair 
of fool’s shoes. Look out!” grinned Wade. 
“About time we were shoving her up to the 
line now — and putting the duck on her!” 

“Here ’s hoping we win the toss !” fervently 
ejaculated the fiery crew of one. 

But the Wild Goose didn’t. As the silver 
coin spun into the air and rebounded on the 
beach, it was the Pelican’s “heads” which 
cornered the lucky weather berth — the fav- 
ored start to windward of her rival. 


I106I 


THE SAND-SAILER 


“Never mind ; we ’ll steal some of that wind 
from her later on,” said Drake, who as a sea- 
scout had learned a racing trick or two upon 
the real blue water — sailing no cross-breed 
craft. 

His eye went anxiously to the ballast for- 
ward : the devoted Rev, with another plump 
heavyweight whose name was a plowshare : 
Ruttencutter. 

^"Heavens! Rutty. If you should take to 
cutting ruts — ruts in the sand!” he ejacu- 
lated. “But — that sure’ is the hurricane 
deck where you ar-re!” apprehensively. 

And then his own heart was heaving on 
wings of hurricane 1 For the little brass can- 
non mounted ambitiously on the beach, be- 
hind the black and white marker, was barking : 
“Off!” 

Wade was leaping into the after cockpit, 
where the fiery crew was already seated and 
grasping the long tiller with his right hand 
was throwing it across his knees. 

A dozen hands of Maunsert boys, outsiders, 
were shoving upon the Wild Goose, to “ heave 
her out of her tracks,” to the tune of delirious 
cheering : 


f 107) 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


‘ Oskee-wow-wow ! M. A. M. A.! 

We ’ll back you to stand, 

’Gainst the best in the land, 

For we know you’ve got sand, 

M. A. !” 

“Very pretty — if the sand does n’t get us !” 
feebly applauded the Rev, from his place on 
the hurricane deck — the wooden fish’s spread- 
ing fins. 

“Whang! Bang! . . . Sis! Boom ! Dar-rn 
the torpedoes ! Let her r-rip ! We ’re — off!” 
the red-haired crew was booming, as he 
trained every sense upon the tending of the 
main-sheet with judgment, the keeping of the 
great main-sail wisely trimmed to what was 
just right for the average strength of a freak- 
ish wind, now breath — now bluster. 

And rip she did, the Wild Goose — the huge 
twenty-by-thirty yacht on wheels — darting 
off, abreast of her rival, at a modest pace that 
gained until, at moments, she was outstripping 
the wind itself, along that dazzling speedway 
of a beach. 

“Whew ! She ’s ‘flickering’ ! Snug — snug 
the snowy; take in on the mains’l a little!” 
shrieked Wade suddenly. “Rearing! Rearingl 

[ io8] 
















“Turtle! Big tur-tle 


AHEAD ! ” Page iO(p 




THE SAND-SAILER 


Ca-an’t af-ford to spill the ballast, you 
know V 

“No-o ! Can't keep her quite so close to the 
wind ! Oh — oh, sit ti-ight, Cut-an’-runner !" 
Thus the anxious crew invoked the boy, up 
forward, the changes on whose cleaver-name 
kept his life on edge. 

But — but it was not Rutty who was plow- 
ing sand-furrows now — cutting ruts — it was 
the giddy Pelican which had lost a passenger 
— spilled overboard as she reared sidelong, 
her starboard wheels lifting. 

It was the Pelican which had to shoot up 
into the wind's eye and heave to a moment, 
to allow of another Blount boy's scrambling 
in — from the number which, at intervals, 
lined the course, just ravening for such an 
opportunity. 

“Hi ! Hi ! Here 's — here 's where we get 
a lead! M-must hold it!" reveled Drake. 
Oh — y-yah!" a moment later. “What's 
that ? Tha-at ahead 1 Never — never Hard- 
shell Fan-nie?" 

“Turtle 1 Big tur-tle — ahead 1" Wade 
was gasping. “Oh — oh 1 we 've got to swing 
out to pass that fellow." 


[ 109] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


But at the wild moment of swinging out 
seaward — tiller hard down — the contrary 
female “fellow/Vthe great loggerhead turtle, 
weighing half a ton, which had landed to lay 
her eggs upon the beach, suddenly — suddenly 
started for the water. 

Right over her back went the starboard 
front-wheel of the Wild Goose — without 
even taking the shine off her invulnerable 
shell. The rear, single wheel, steering wheel, 
tilted on end madly, too. 

An awful spill-and-pelt scramble, a heart- 
freezing struggle for skipper and crew ; and — 
and the Goose was in the ripples, splashing, 
wading — her boom-end almost dipping ! 

“We Te lost — out of it V* 

“No-o — we aren’t!” 

Lightning-like, the crew, his ginger head a 
raving fire-ball amid the spray, was slacking 
off on the main-sheet, spilling the wind out of 
the sail, shedding it by sheer force of will, it 
seemed, into the surge, while Wade, hard 
heaving, turned his sailer’s nose up into that 
strong wind which could either send or stay. 

But consternation fell upon the racers. 

“We ’ve spilt the — Rev 1” 


[ no] 


THE SAND-SAILER 


Yes ! as, by a miracle, the amphibious Goose 
splashed on to her course again, it was not 
Ruttencutter who was seen to have landed in 
the surf-ripples, but the other heavyweight, 
hotly pursued by a turkey-red cushion, which 
turned the water sanguinary where it struck. 

The plump Rev was the centre of the pret- 
tiest rainbowed fountain — playing Cupid to 
the cushion. 

But his frenzied ship-mates’ eyes were 
blind to his beauty. 

“Quick ! Quick ! Another boy ! Another — 
to take his place and hold her nose down!” 
clamored the skipper wildly. 

With the major portion of the ballast over- 
board, the nose of the Wild Goose — by 
nature she slanted upward a little — was al- 
ready disastrously lifting. 

“Two — two boys ahead 1 Oh-h 1 it ’s the 
Wastrel.” The crew ’s breath came fast. 
“Qui-ick! you waif. Scramble in! Little 
Jean too 1 Together, your weight will about 
make up for hisV" 

They had not been hoping for such a chance, 
those younger boys stationed half-way down 
the course. 


[in] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


But, whooping madly, hop, skip and jump ! 
they were in the Rev's breeze-rocked nest — 
steadying the racer’s bow. 

At the same time something else went hop, 
skip, too ; the contents of the Wastrel’s pocket, 
as he dived between the squall’s legs aboard. 

A shooting eye which sent regretful rays 
after the racers as it burrowed headlong into 
the sand : the mock-sun of a little pocket micro- 
scope which the science teacher had given him ! 
A ball of twine ! And — something else ! 

Something on which the young gale 
pounced gleefully, as if to say: “Hullo! old 
fellow, I ’ve been waiting for you,” and 
eagerly whirled it off. 

The Wastrel — the Wastrel caught his 
thumb between his teeth. 

He bit into his world with it. The world 
being swept away from him by the gust I The 
only relic of the world of family and affection 
such as other boys had 1 

The world for which he paid too big a price 
when he mailed those booty boxes 1 

“ My-y — picture 1 ” 

Dodging the swinging boom, he was about 
to jump after it. 

[ill] 


THE SAND-SAILER 


But Rutty had him by the arm — there in 
the forward cockpit — and Drake’s yell was 
splitting his ears with a : 

“ Sit still — fool ! If you jump now, an’ lose 
us the race — I ’ll kill you ! I ’ll — get it.” 

All the odds were against his “getting it.” 
The Wild Goose was warming up to her flight 
again — again creeping up on her rocking rival. 

The crew of one had his hands full. Yet he 
slipped the sheet into Wade’s left hand. His 
red eyelashes flickered — points of flame. 

Did he realize, Drake the seascout, had he 
an inkling, as the gust donned the mask of a 
faded photograph that the face was the face 
of Fate, that it wore the features of a moment 
so immensely more exciting than this as to 
make the heart-beats of the race seem mere 
tick-tacks ; that its yellowing shine might even 
be the sheen of the Adventurer’s Cup — that 
prize of Life for Life’s strangest tale ? 

Standing upon the narrow coaming of the 
cockpit, clinging with one hand to the shiver- 
ing boom, he captured the fragment of a like- 
ness in the shadow of a second when it was 
flattened against the mainsail — against the 
proud school colors. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“ Goo-ood ! Glad I nailed you ! ” His broad 
chest heaved. “You may be a clue to — 
Heaven knows what !” Little points of white 
light came and went in his eyes. “You may 
be — fiddlesticks. I — I dl button up on you, 
anyway !” 

And so the Wastrel, for the second time, lost 
his world ! 

To Drake the torn fragment safe in the 
breast-pocket of his flannel shirt seemed a 
mascot. 

“Ha ! I beat you to it.'' He grinned at the 
young gale. An' now for beating the Pelican ! 
If we keep on as we 're going, we 'll round the 
marker a minute ahead of her — and corner 
the weather berth all the way back." 

Ha, Drake 1 did any voice from the baffled 
gust breeze back: “Everyone must wear out 
one pair of fool's shoes!" 

The marker was in sight now, the top point 
of the race, as it were — the hottest point — 
the black and white marker rising out of the 
sands. 

Quite a little crowd was gathered beyond it, 
men, women, boys, girls, who had driven down 
the beach in automobiles, to view the critical 


[ 114] 


THE SAND-SAILER 


turning point, comment on the sailing and 
cheer the competitors. 

A crowd — and all featherdom, too ! 

The Rookie was there, the soldier heron, 
statuesque as ever, at a distance — though 
this was beyond the sanctuary limits. 

A bald-headed eagle umpired above that 
magpie marker. 

‘'Go it, Maunsert ! Bully! Bully I Show 
’em the way 1 Show them the road ev-ery 
time ! ” cheered the supporters of the crimson 
and gray, as Wade swung the tiller hard over 
and the Wild Goose jibed, to pass the brindled 
spar. 

“Low-ow bridge 1 In — in with your heads 
— a tunnel coming!” shrieked the fiery crew 
to the three boys now crouching in the cock- 
pit, for’ard, in the wildest moment of their 
lives, as the boom came over with a thundering 
slat that threatened to tear the mast away — 
and the yacht-wheeler reared again on two 
legs. 

“Aha! Quarter of a minute ahead, any- 
how ! It — it ’s give it to her now all we can, 
upon the homeward stretch,” breathed Drake. 

And in the boastful frenzy of the moment he 


[115] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


stood up to wave his hand to one girl of girls 
— a blown peach-blossom amid the crowd 
beyond the stake. 

‘‘Aha !” jeered the young gale slyly — and 
seized that moment to “beat him to it.” 

Hoo-rah-i-i ! Boo-hoo ! Shrieking madly it 
created an air-pocket — two blustrous beach- 
currents meeting ! The Wild Goose entered 
that pocket and was lost — momentarily. 

She spun half-round, not minding her 
rudder. 

She jibed, on her own hook, again. 

The shifting boom caught Drake on the 
back — just as his hand delivered that flippant 
wave, and . . . overboard he went. 

Overboard, white legs in the air like a pair 
of cracked compasses, to land, kerthump, with 
a terrific thud ! 

“Hi! Hi! Yah! Yah! Hipkiddy! Hip- 
kiddy! We know you’ve got sand!” guyed 
Blount of the blue — jeering from the Peli- 
can’s deck. 

The Wild Goose chicken had got it — no 
doubt about that — the addled gosling ! 

Sand filled his gyrating sneakers — which 
seemed as if they would go on describing 


THE SAND-SAILER 


circles for ever — owing to the momentum 
with which he had shot over — the speed at 
which the erratic Goose was flying. 

Sand filled his wide-open fool's mouth — 
his ringing ears. Within him all was quiv- 
ering quicksands in which consciousness was 
sinking. 

Sand rainbows flogged him, as, in the shock, 
he rolled over and over — the handsomest 
sand-pipe the crowd had ever seen. 

But through it all — in the heart of those 
sinking quicksands — some other sand-ballast 
was vaguely forming. It guided the hand 
which through the vortex shot out — blindly 
out — and gripped the cockpit's coaming as 
Wade — a raging skipper — slacked off on 
the main-sheet, spilling the wind out of the 
slatting sail — on the wing of victory slowed 
down. 

“ D-don't s-stop ! I — I 'll ha-ang on. If 
I can't get aboard, ma-ake it with-out me," 
blew off, at intervals, the spilled one, his bare 
arms tense, his feet flying, his body streaming 
out, now on, now off the beach, like a white 
bargee. 

Another pair ^fools' shoes gritted Wade, 

[ 117] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


between his teeth, but he had the tiller be- 
tween his knees, too, the sheet in his left hand. 

With the right his hauling clutch — and it 
was not alone his feet which kicked the beam 
for strength — was on the buffeted body of 
his crew. 

Dragged twenty-five yards, beaten to a 
sand-bag, that gingery crew found himself 
by-and by aboard again, half-dead — the Wild 
Goose rolling and wallowing now, her speed 
slackened to fifteen miles an hour whereas she 
had rounded the stake at about forty-five. 

“Burned lubber! Just like you, always — 
always twosing with — a — girl 1 gnashed the 
skipper. “Lost us the race you have V* 

But the race was not lost, after all. The 
Wild Goose was the fleeter sailer of the two 
— and the better sailed, too. 

Fifteen minutes later, after much manoeu- 
vring of both freak yachts, to blanket each 
other's wind on the homeward tack — and 
each wishing that the other would get enough 
of it in a squall to shiver her timbers and 
burst her blooming rags — the honking Goose 
hopped across the line on one leg, the other 
tucked up to her, her star-board wheel lifted 


THE SAND-SAILER 


so high, that it was almost at right angles 
with her backbone — the squall hissing for her ! 

And half-a-minute — half-a-minute ahead 
of the Pelican ! 

The Wastrel had forgotten even his spin- 
ning world now, the paper scrap — the blight- 
ing shadow cast upon his schoolboy life by 
those booty boxes. 

Together with little nine-year-old Jean and 
“Rutty” he was standing on one leg, too, in 
that forward cockpit, holding on for dear life, 
and honking to “beat the band.” 

In the thick of the school cheers Drake, 
sore all over, suddenly remembered that the 
wind had in neither case exactly “beaten him 
to it.” He felt for the photograph in his 
pocket — and grinned. 

“'Lucky I buttoned the flap over it!” he 
thought. “I won't let the careless kid have 
it back. Gee ! if there c-could — if there 
should be anything in tha-at, wouldn't Life 
be a top-notcher ?” 


[ 119] 


CHAPTER X 

The Loon Procession 

1 END me, gods, a whole hog barbecued I” 
It was the Headmaster who was 
spouting to the evening sands — 
Maunsert's Headmaster. 

In Maunsert’s racing triumph he was as 
much a boy again as Rutty or little Jean — 
and the gold ball which he wore on his watch- 
chain, witness to the triumph of his school on 
the track over the freshmen of a famous col- 
lege — in a more formal event — glowed, a 
radiant sphere. 

The frost of his little goatee had turned 
flame just now, blazing like stubble in the com- 
bined rays of the brilliant sunset streaming 
across the ocean and the more flaunting red 
of the deep fire burning in a sand-pit near him, 
over which was suspended a sixty-pound 


[ 120 ] 


THE LOON PROCESSION 


porker — the whole hog barbecued, or In 
process of barbecuing. 

Mutso, the Jap chef, who had charge of pre- 
paring the feast in Maunsert's honor, sat, 
cross-legged by the beach pit, now and again 
stirring with an iron rod the sunken embers, 
where the ruddy heart of the fire-king, himself, 
seemed broiling upon hot stones, so intense 
was the heat given forth. 

Asumoro ni Korite namasu wo JukuV^ piped 
Mutso suddenly as a furious dragon-fly of a 
spark, swimming up from the pit, lit upon his 
brown hand and burned it. 

^'Namasu! FukuV echoed a crowd of boys, 
seizing wildly upon the new words as straws 
for the fire of revelry within, as they whirled 
about the white-capped cook. 

“That — that's what they say in Japan 
where we 'd say ‘a burnt cat dreads the fire !' 
He told me,” boasted the Wastrel, whom the 
chef had never scathingly accused of trying to 
catch fly and bee together in his kitchen work 
— and accomplishing neither. “And now — 
now — I want my picture back!” The Am- 
ber Jack among the yelling crowd sidled, pres- 
ently, up to Drake, his yellow head as blown 


[ I2I ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


as a last year's haymow. — I think the 
world of it." 

There was a piteous little down-dragging of 
the lip-corners, the weight of a world hanging 
upon each. 

“When you can take better care of that 
world of yours, you can have it," returned the 
senior a little cruelly. “Just now-ow, I 'm 
going to keep it for you !" 

And so the Wastrel, for the second time, 
saw his universe melt away from him. He had 
no resource but to mingle in the games and 
victorious stunts of the younger Maunsert 
boys who, among other diversions, had found 
a stranded loon at some distance from the 
water and unable to get back, paddling itself 
among the sand-hills with the aid of its beak, 
to help out the short wings so nearly impotent 
on land. 

It was Rutty who captured and carried it 
about, a captive in Maunsert's train, before 
he restored it to the tide, the bird coming in 
with a maniacal chuckle, and an occasional 
snap, on the school cheers — yet seeming to 
have it straight as a loon's leg that, here, it 
would not really be molested. 


[ 122 ] 


THE LOON PROCESSION 


“ What *s dat, what *s dat dis niggah’s eyes, 
Displore wit* — mighty big supprise?*’ 

cackled a very aged voice, suddenly near, 
mingling in the loon laughter, coming in on 
the loony procession, where the guyed water- 
bird was borne in the lead — a black and 
white curio. 

“Hi! Hi! Honk! Honk! Wild Goose! 
Wild Goose! Bill — Bill! Minstrel Bill ! Bill 
for the barbecue in a tall hat ! Bill for the 
barbecue — in minstrePs togs ! Hi ! Hi ! 
Bill ! Bill ! Bill !” yelled an answering medley, 
in which the loon's shamed hisses were the 
one sane note. 

“Dance, Bill! Song, Bill — a song! . . . 
Cane, Bill — h-here 's a cane ! " 

An oar was thrust into the old man's hands. 
With it held solemnly on end against his 
breast, his white wool floating — cackling, 
capering — he was following the loon on 
mincing step, when a hand cruelly snatched 
his oar-cane from him. 

'‘Bill! Bill! Don't go ‘dotty ' ! Bill, 
I want to speak to you. I 'll let you go in just 
a minute. Bill ! did you ever see a face like 
that ?" 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


The world was in Drake’s throat now — he 
could scarcely speak. 

It was the yellowing fragment of a picture, 
the head and shoulders of a man, a pair of 
heavy-lidded eyes, which had been in the 
plume-hunter’s pocket, the wind’s pocket, and 
was now in that of the Maunsert senior’s, 
which he held up to the bleary old gaze bend- 
ing over it from under the crooked, dented red 
of an old minstrel’s hat. 

‘‘ Laws-a-mussy, chile! I don’ know — ” 

But Bill had started — quiveringly started. 
His red coat-tails shook. 

At the core of his being the scout felt that 
start, like an explosion. 

He took Bill suddenly by the ear, the dull- 
ing ear, and, unheard by the loony procession 
which had halted to wait for the new addition, 
hurled a name into it — drove it again, as if 
— as if he would blast that ancient ear-drum, 
to get at some knowledge behind it. 

Bill looked at him dizzily. 

Bill 1 is it like — him ? ” 

The old man whimpered ; age cowed by the 
shock of youth 1 

Under his gaudy salmon-colored waistcoat, 

[124] 


THE LOON PROCESSION 


a fog lifted, lifted for a moment, then heavily 
it dragged again, a mist without wind. 

“Laws! fella, dat — dat Juba w’at have 
de crazy-bone here T’ He struck his forehead. 
“I — I don’ know, chile. I cuden testament- 
uate. Dese ole eyes — c-can’t — displore — ” 

“Oh-h! I came to a river an* I could n*t get across ; 
Singing Polly-Wolly-Doodle ! 

An’ I jumped upon a nigger an’ I tho’t he was a hoss 
Singing Polly-Wolly-Doodle I ” 

broke in the Loon Procession mockingly — 
quick to see that the senior who ihterrupted 
it was baffled about something. 

No! this nigger was “no horse” by which 
he could ford the stream of speculation form- 
ing within him, catching in its current all the 
wild energies of his being, Drake felt that — 
that stream on the other shore of which some- 
times shone the Adventurers’ Cup, and some- 
thing greater, immeasurably greater, than 
that; something which set the game beyond 
the prize — that prize of Life for Life’s 
strangest tale. 

But Bill had started. And in the depths 
of his being the scout had registered that 
shock. 


[ 125] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


“Pshaw! 'no use trying to get anything 
more out of him," he murmured to himself, 
as the old minstrel, tantalized beyond endur- 
ance, snatched the oar and broke away from 
him, to fall in behind the hissing loon with a 
cackling chant of; 

“ Juber up and Juber down, 

Juber all aroun’ de town, 

Juber dis an" Juber dat. 

An" Juber roun" de simmon vat ! 

Hoe corn an" hill tobacca. 

Git over double trouble — Juba 1 Juba I"" 

“Well! one thing I know — no double 
trouble is going to stop me, this side o' the 
Big Cypress. Not until I try out this thing 
which has got into my idea-pot!" Drake 
stretched his long arms above his head. “ But 
nobody else is going to get a peep into the 
pot — and call me an imaginative fool later — 
no, sir! not even the Scoutmaster — just 
yet." 


[126] 


CHAPTER XI 


H 


A Beach Barbecue 

ERE 'S to the Big Cypress ! Here 's 
to the Adventurers’ Cup! Here’s to 
the Okoloacoochee — Indian Potato 
Slough — where no foot of Boy Scout has — 
ever — yet trod 1 ” 

It was the Sons of Rest who gave the toast, 
sitting about the deep flame-pit in the sands 
over which the nutty, brown hams of the 
razor-back were spicily toasting. 

The Loon Procession was still in swing, with 
salmon-vested Bill and white-breasted loon as 
leading features. 

But the older boys were tired of burlesque. 

‘'Here — here’s to tarpon-fishing in the 
great waters of the Gulf!” said Wade. “The 
Gulf of Mexico, all pearly and pink at day- 
break, and the Silver King — the king of 


[ 127] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


fishes — r-rolling lazily ! And — the strike, 
when he hits the hook with a bang ! Wow ! 
Jumps ten feet, or more, out of water; the 
broadest — most wonderful rainbow — 

“A moment like that — your oratory — 
ought to win the Adventurers' Cup, Wade, if 
your sailing of the Wild Goose does n't do it ; 
or — or your stirring tale: ‘My night with a 
wild donkey.'" Dean laughed. 

“It's one thing to company with an ass; 
it 's another thing to be one — shoot over- 
board at the most critical moment — twosing 
with a girl — and nearly throw the race," re- 
turned Dingtoe suavely. 

Whereat the Sons of Rest shot temporarily 
“up into the wind," and hung there, flat- 
tened ! 

Others — others took their places around 
the barbecue fire, toasting day-dreams — day- 
dreams for the capture of that lion's prize — 
the Adventurers' Cup. 

Rich men's sons were there among these 
older boys, lads whose fathers had princely 
winter homes at some balmy Florida beach 
where they would spend the Easter vacation ; 
some, like Wade, for whom companionship 

[ 128] 


A BEACH BARBECUE 


with “the Pater'' meant unforgettable spring 
days upon a powerful steam-yacht, cruising 
among the Florida Keys, or perhaps, away olF, 
sword-fishing, to the Bahamas. 

No doubt the plum of the most thrilling holi- 
day moment would fall to their lot — they 
who had the golden key to the garden of 
adventure ! 

Yet, those others who, with the Scoutmaster, 
if they would enter that garden of spice, would 
have to storm it in the long, aching strain of 
two weeks' paddling southward ; in the further 
creeping by canal into the draining heart of the 
Everglades, in the long, hard hike, across pine- 
flat, prairie and snake-hung swamp to their 
goal in the Big Cypress — these contrary 
“Sons of Rest" were not discouraged. 

“The Cup really may not fall to the most 
spicy adventure; one clause of the donator 
says ‘for the best story of Life told in the 
best way' ; that lets in the laugh and the sob- 
stuff, too. The Rev might even pull it off by 
his going over the top in St. Augustine — 
when I was ready to crawl through a crack." 
Dean laughed, throwing a handful of hot sand 
at Sharron. “Hip ! I don't know but it took 


[ 129] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


more ‘sand’ for that than to face a swamp 
panther.” 

“For a scout good turn it certainly took the 
hoe-cake,” agreed Drake. 

“Aw ! shut up,” came from the long suffer- 
ing Rev, whose plump elbows were buried in 
the beach. 

“Pax — yourself! You weren’t half as 
thrilling a picture defying those tourists in the 
narrow street near the old fort at St. Augustine, 
as you were to-day, shooting overboard, a 
heavy body — ker-wash, splash 1 — into the 
surf, hotly pursued by a red cushion,” laughed 
Dean. 

“Well! we witnessed the latter picture — 
some of us did. And I ’ve heard a sketch of 
the former one — there are scouts here who 
haven’t,” suggested the Scoutmaster. “Let 
us have it with the high lights ! I was in 
France that year.” 

“And we were ‘grueling’ because we 
could n’t be ! To take the edge off, the Head- 
master gave us permission, we three, to go over 
to St. Augustine, one day, and view the old 
Spanish fort there — Fort Marion now. We 
rigged to kill — wanted to make some social calls 


[ 130] 


A BEACH BARBECUE 


after we had done ‘disploring/ as Bill calls it. 
The Rev — his uncle keeps a ‘Men’s Furnish- 
ings ’ — you should have seen him/’ and Dean 
grinned, “the lavender hem of the handker- 
chief peeping out of his pocket just matching 
his tie and the clocks on his ‘ trick ’ calves ! 
. . . We-e had caught him on a chair — ad- 
miring himself — ” 

“ Burn it ! I’m not the ‘ roast ’ ! ” The Rev 
glanced indignantly at the pig — and dug his 
fingers into his ears. 

“Well! after we had done the fort we 
filtered through one of the narrow, half-ruined 
old streets in a very ancient part of the city. 
Not a soul in sight 1 And the houses — hum 1 
you could kick ’em over in your stocking feet.” 

“There was one person — if you could call 
him so-o,” threw in Drake. 

“Who’s telling this?” Deanie bristled. 
“Well! the ‘person’ was the worst kind of a 
tattered bounder, full up of ‘moonshine’ — in 
his arms an equally ragged and dirty Creole 
baby — with bright little eyes, like a squirrel. 

“‘Gosh! he’ll kill the kid before he gets 
through’ gnashed the Rev, for the ‘drunk,’ 
he was rolling like a hooker in a hurricane. 


[ 131 ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

‘We ought to do-o something. But what?’ 
The sot settled the question for us by pitching 
headlong into the middle of the street, where 
he lay like a log, while the kiddie rolled into a 
‘ dandy-hole ’ — a splashing puddle. 

“Wow! Did it cry? Not much! Just 
stretched up its little brown arms to us, as — 
as playful as a panther-pup ; by all ac- 
counts, they ’re the 'playfullest’ things ! The 
Rev ! Well ! you should have seen him squirm : 

*‘'If — if we leave it lying here,’ he said, 
‘ ten to one ’t will be run over. No help for it, 
as the rooster said in a thunder-shower; 
guess I ’ve got to chaperon it some — until we 
meet somebody ! ’ 

“He picked the little gutter baby up — for 
we were in a hurry — held it right against the 
‘trick’ handkerchief, marched on down the 
street, while we rolled the bounder under the 
lee of an ash-barrel — that I vow had been 
there nine hundred years — or so. 

“Well — well! we did meet ‘somebody’ 
pretty soon ; three flashy kids, tourists — one 
with a spark-prop in his tie, though he was only 
fifteen — and they began to get ‘ fresh.’ 

“‘Ha! Ha! Ha! You — you hold the 


A BEACH BARBECUE 

baby an* I *11 talk to it ! * they got oflF — and 
blocked Sharron*s way. ‘What! Next door 
to a little black pick’ninny, by gr-racious 1 
And who — who’s the butter-hearted nurse 
— the — * 

“Well, you should have seen Drake’s fingers 
curl up, like hot wire. He made one step for- 
ward — and the spark-pin in the guy’s tie 
was n’t in it with his eye. 

“Humph! The three shoved ahead instan- 
ter ; they did n’t want any of the hot stuff from 
a Maunsert boxer. We forged ahead too ; and 
were up against more tourists; men, women 
and — girls ! Wowee ! You should have seen 
the Rev’s carnation colors; but he marched 
right on.” 

“I — I tell you, I’m not the barbecue!” 
roared the baited one again. 

“Ha! One of the girls thought you were! 
She broke away and ran after us. ‘Oh! 
What’s the matter?’ she cried. ‘Is — is It 
hurt ? Let me take it ! ’ And I ’m blest if she 
did n’t look at the Rev as if — as if he were a 
‘ponded’ soldier — as I’ve heard white kid- 
dies call the wounded men. . . . Out of that 
may come another story.” 

[ 133] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


“I hope so/' murmured Sharron sentimen- 
tally — breathing relief. “Have you fin- 
ished?" looking at Dean. 

“Finished — all but the cheers!" said the 
Scoutmaster. “A good scout yarn ! Who — 
who have we here, the chief scout of the sanc- 
tuary ; or — or a tourist ? " 

“Tourist, for the time being!" laughed 
Boyd Wulf, dropping his powerful figure, in the 
latest tenderfoot's rig down to monocle, um- 
brella and camera, on to the beach beside the 
group. 

“That means you 're after ‘plumers' ! Try- 
ing to mingle with them and get at their game 
— shooting birds illegally, eh ?" remarked the 
Scoutmaster again. 

“Yes, I 've a suspicion there are some 
around. I heard a shot last night within the 
sanctuary limits. But who 's helping 'em out 
I don't know. I 've had the post office here 
watched — in other places, too — given a de- 
scription of the men who might be mailing the 
stuff. They shot out a whole rookery down in 
the Big Cypress, leaving mutilated bodies of 
mother birds — " 

There was a strange sound near. The Loon 


A BEACH BARBECUE 


Procession had halted. But the shivering sob, 
if there was one, was lost in the tired-out 
laughter of the lionized loon. 

“Better — better return it to the water 
now, boys,’' said the sachem, or bird-chief. 
“You Ve paraded enough. 

“I 'm bound to get those fellows,” he re- 
marked later, still harping on the plume- 
hunters, “even if I have to chase after them 
down to the Everglades and Big Cypress 
Swamp, again.” 

“Whoopee! Perhaps we’ll run on to you 
there,” said Drake. “ If we do, maybe you can 
give us a lift, in your slick hunting wagon. 
We — we ’re out for adventure, you know, 
to ‘see the elephant,’ go where no boy scouts 
have ever ventured before.” 

“Adventure! Well, you stand a smart 
chance of being fed up on that !” laughed the 
warden-tourist. “Find it hard to sleep at 
night, you will, with the sprinkling of noises 
near your camp : the scream of a panther, purr 
of a wildcat, from the swamps the belling of 
bull alligators — maybe the grating whine of a 
big bear ! 

“Wow ! Dandy !” Dean smacked his lips. 

[ 135] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 

“You 'll have hard work to get ahead of us, 
Wade, in a try-y for the Adventurers' Cup, 
swinging your ‘puppies' from a swivel chair," 
with a glance at Dingtoe's feet, “wooing your 
Silver King!" 

“I — almost wish I were going with you," 
muttered the sand-yacht's owner. 

“ Did — did you ever-r — " Drake had 
drawn suddenly near to the bird-chief and now 
his whisper had the legs of the wind in its low, 
eddying rush — “oh-h I suppose you nev-er 
ran on to the Wild Man, the man they call 
Im-mar — Im-mar and then some — who 
won't — won't even look at a white — fel- 
low ?" 

“Once I caught sight of him, I guess — 
mighty long way off — dodging around amid 
the — the moccasins and mistletoe in the 
thick tangle of a swamp. Hunting something 
he seemed to be, maybe only flowers — orchids 
— as the Indians say he does 1 I only caught 
sight of his doubled over shoulders. Don't 
know — am not sure, even to this day, whether 
it was a Wild Man — or a wild animal 1" 

“The Indians — the Indians are his only 
friends," ventured the scout again. “Nobody 

[ 136] 


A BEACH BARBECUE 


seems to know him by any other name but that 
which they gave him as a Nature shark 

“Well-ll, I reckon he started out with a 
paleface label, like the rest of us,” said Boyd. 
“ Maybe — maybe I did hear-r it once — be- 
gan with S, if I remember rightly. But he was 
r-right fond o’ romancing ’bout Indian names 
an’ how superior they were to ours, as meaning 
something — something characteristic. Al- 
ways was a little ‘hypped,’ I reckon! But I 
don’t believe he ’s as ‘heap loco’ as they think 
he is, only — only he has that queer phobia 
against his own white kind, because one of 
them, long ago, spilled the beans.” 

“In other words, he has a mosquito in the 
salt-box, as they say ‘over there,’” put in the 
Scoutmaster. 

“Humph ! yes. But ’t will keep on stinging 
till doomsday, for any chance a white man will 
get to shoo it out,” chuckled Wulf. “The 
Indians alone know where his lair is, deep in 
the heart of the Big Cypress — and they ’re 
not telling. They ’ll — never — ” 

“They w-wontT* Drake had sprung to his 
feet, was looking down — down — at the pant- 
ing flames in the fire-pit. 

[ 137] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Around him the tide of the barbecue fun 
went on. He saw nothing but those sad giants, 
the bald cypresses, with snakes as garters upon 
their gray old knees, and somewhere among 
them the lone lair of the lone white man ; the 
white man with a phobia. 

“Too bad he should have taken it so — so 
ter-ri-bly to heart that — that another man 
‘spilled the beans/ as you say, an’ caused 
s-such trouble in an Indian camp — but, of 
course, he was a record ‘fool’!” muttered 
the scout. “Why-y 1 hullo. Judge 1” And the 
boy was back from the Big Cypress, back upon 
the festive beach, with laughter calling to 
him. 

“Hullo — all here 1” returned a newcomer, 
lifting a little old blue derby, two sizes too 
small for him, with Southern courtesy. “Hul- 
lo 1 Bill ^ — been fishing to-day ? ” 

He looked down at the old minstrel who, 
tired of dancing Juba with eyes, feet and hands 
all going, had dropped upon the sands at a 
respectful distance from the fire. 

Bill nodded. 

“Now we dl have some fun,” the Scout- 
master winked, “when these two ‘get going.’ 

[138] 


A BEACH BARBECUE 


There never was a fish caught by a barbecue 
fire yet, weighing less than fifty pounds/' 

“ How many did you get to-day, Bill ? " The 
newcomer cocked his blue hat awry. 

“Laws ! Bo, ah had ba-ad luck — only got 
three." 

“Pshaw! Bill, you can't fish any longer — 
you 'd better quit." 

“Wall I ain' seen you totin' any fish- 
market aroun' here lately. ' Guess, if you 
cotched a fish de size ob your hand, Jedge, 
't would pull yo' out o' de boat — hey 1" 

Me! I would n't waste time on the small 
fry around here. I go after — real fish." 

“Lawdy 1 yes. Talk 's cheap, but it all takes 
money to buy moonshine," cackled the old 
minstrel. “Ha 1 Ha 1 Ha 1 My libin' soul!" 

And with that the fishing upon the dry sands 
waxed so fast and furious that the boys had 
hard work to keep up with it and record the 
weight of the fabulous catch. Jew-fish, monk- 
fish, pounding drum-fish, whose rub-a-dub-dub 
could be heard for miles — until the Judge was 
fishing with live lizards, three-horned ones, at 
that, and Bill was “locking up his mule" lest 
the adversary should use him for bait ! 

[ 139] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

“They cert'nly are a pair/’ laughed Wulf, 
shifting uneasily in his tourist’s rig. “Ha! 
What ’s that ? Mess call ? R-right smart 
bugler you have there — Scoutmaster!” 

Yes, as Mutso announced, the barbecue was 
now ready — Mutso who had been remarking 
covertly to the roast porker for the past half- 
dozen minutes that “de feesh was lar-rge dat 
fell f’om de hook.” 

Well ! such goblin catches only whetted ap- 
petite as the scouts marshalled invited guests 
to the long tables spread upon the beach, the 
Scoutmaster, who always had his hands full — 
and “then some” — as the boys said, acting 
as master of ceremonies. 

The whole peninsula had been invited, for 
that matter, so far as humans went. And the 
birds were there, too, in high feather. 

From some distant point of the tide’s edge 
came back the maniacal laugh of the freed loon, 
mingling in Maunsert’s revelry, as boys enter- 
tained the rising tide with every song they 
knew, from “Polly Wolly Doodle” and “Muss, 
Muss, Mr. O Toole — Billy Bracket’s where 
I went to school !” to: 

“Maunsert, Alma Mater, here ’s to you ! 

Rah ! Rah I 


A BEACH BARBECUE 


Home of the tried and the true, 

Rah! Rah! 

Like the lighthouse ’hove the sea, 

May thy spirit ever be, 

A beacon-light to me ! 

Rah! Rah-h!^* 

But in Drake’s adventurer’s soul, over the 
sands, over the ocean, another beacon-light was 
burning. 

Far — far it led by treacherous willow 
island, snaky swamp, pine-flat and prairie to 
the lonely Seminole trail to an Indian Reserva- 
tion crossing Indian Potato Slough, where 
never foot of white boy had been set before. 

A will-o’-the-wisp it was, no doubt — just a 
man in the moon “frame-up,” as, at moments, 
he told himself ! 

But — the adventurer’s urge was upon him 
— and he must follow it ! 

“One thing — one thing I know,” he de- 
cided, nailing its colors to the mast, as honk- 
ing schoolboys filed homeward by torchlight, 
“that is, that if human wits can wor-rk it — 
and never mind the double trouble — that 
Wastrel is coming down with us to the Big 
Cypress !” 


CHAPTER XII 
The Challenge 

“TTE acts as if he had butter on his head, 

i X saying is — something melt- 

ing on his conscience. I can’t make 
him out.” 

Drake looked after the yellow head of the 
Wastrel, silvered by soap-suds and the noon- 
tide sun, as it mingled with other iridescent 
heads around the campus fountain, in whose 
broad stone basin boys were wont to exercise 
a ‘"wash-up,” in eager anticipation of the 
dinner-bell. 

It was almost time for that bell now. The 
ablutionists were hungry and excited. In 
some ways the preceding forenoon had been a 
memorable one — rather. 

The last period had been devoted to natural 
science in the big class-room where the biology 

[ 142] 


THE CHALLENGE 


course was a sort of new broom sweeping in 
all — all over twelve who could dissect a toad 
or draw the internal organs of an earth-worm 
pinned to a cork-pad. 

The cleft worm had given way to a lizard 
for anatomizing to-day, the American chame- 
leon, or alligator lizard, the subtle fairy of the 
woodland hammock or other green places near 
the school. 

Half-a-dozen of these elfin lizards had been 
collected by the instructor in science, were 
held captive in a wire-covered box that the 
boys might observe their transfiguring habits, 
those who were not patient and interested 
enough to make a study of the little “witch- 
ety” thing amid its natural surroundings. 

Two of the prisoners had put on the livid 
green and black livery of death, in the interests 
of science ; and the students had to take turns 
in drawing the life-organs of these, laid bare, 
the split head without any tympanum, or 
brain-pan, the capacious lungs ending in sacs 
extending far down into the body-cavity, so 
that the little angry creature could blow itself 
up all over, like the frog in the fable — and 
especially the elastic tongue. 

[143] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


The Wastrel had taken his turn at the 
haggled remains on the cork-pad — and mem- 
ory had shown him only too vividly the fateful 
morning when Dyke had run on to him near 
the sulphur spring, intent on the little creature 
simply afire with the spark of life, here, there, 
brown, green, and even at times golden yellow, 
in the variety of its elfin emotions. 

‘‘Pshaw ! I just h-hate to draw it d-dead,” 
he confessed ingenuously — being a “ new 
kid” — to the fifteen-year-old boy beside 
him. “It was — it was the ‘ witchetiest’ thing 
— you ’d think *t would jump out of its skin 
altogether. Even its eyes — ** 

“Softy ! Ninny !” muttered the other boy, 
lumpish and unimaginative, for there had been 
a shake in the WastreFs voice. 

“Lunkhead! Dunderhead! You never 
watched it, outdoors, at all.** 

Now the Wastrel blew himself out and 
hissed — hissed within schoolroom limits — 
like the chameleon. 

“I *m not the numskull — it ’s you,** panted 
the adversary heavily. “An* no wonder! 
Look — look where you came from — 1-look 
where — the school — picked you up !** 


THE CHALLENGE 


Neff stared at him dizzily for a moment — 
it was the first time this had been flung in his 
teeth. 

‘‘Tha-at ’s all right for you, after school,'^ 
he breathed furiously then — this being the 
Maunsert code of challenge. 

“All-11 right !” took up the other. “You ’ll 
have an eye in mourning, before you know 
where you are — gutter-snipe!” 

Upon which Neff — Neff, brought down to 
earth, stung, humiliated, but stung to his best 

— a best that seemed foreign even to himself 

— made a drawing of the chameleon’s interior 
in which the crudity of the penciled outlines 
was more than made up for by the wonderful 
accuracy of the boy’s observation. 

He did more. Called upon, in turn, to give 
a description of the little nixie-lizard’s habits, 
as observed in the open — still at fever-heat 
from the taunt flung at him — he sprung one 
upon the assembled boys and teacher which 
almost took away their breath. 

He seemed to be moulting like the chame- 
leon, shedding a dull outer skin and showing a 
new and vivid one, all ready, grown from 
within, to take its place. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


The “recitation’’ was given in good English, 
strange, glowing English from his boyish 
tongue, as if some hidden spring had been re- 
leased in that, as it was in the tongue of the 
little lizard of his description when it was pro- 
jected, club-shaped, six or seven inches, to 
“shoot” a mark, otherwise a fly. 

“My wor-rd ! it’s as if the kid was turned 
inside out,” muttered Drake to his desk, 
amazed. “ Can’t he take the stump, though — 
a waif like him ? Nev-er mind the double- 
trouble ! He is coming down with us to the 
Cypress. Gee ! talk of — adventure — ” 
But, there, the senior had to break off in his 
imaginings to talk of something else, of the 
little squinting chameleon, whose pin-hole eyes 
worked, each, on its own hook, independently of 
the other ; the elf who slept in green, fought in 
green, strutting about with a rival’s green tail 
in his mouth, died in green — and at other mo- 
ments was brown as the twig to which he flitted. 

This he did with a fair amount of fluency 
and the fruits of scouting observation, but his 
description fell far short of the passion and 
insight of the Wastrel’s. 

So did that of every other senior. 

[146] 


THE CHALLENGE 


The science teacher was so carried away by 
it that he gave the class a shock; he made a 
dot in the middle of a page, the four corners 
of which were marked off like the four quarters 
of the earth into good, excellent, middling, 
poor. 

‘‘That stands for a perfect recitation,” he 
said, “the first ever given here,” and, then, 
being a long-winded instructor, he prosed 
along on the chameleon as a gilded miniature 
of the ’gator, the ugly bull-alligator, with 
which the boys were familiar on river-bank or 
in mud-hole, until . . . 

“Yir-r-r-rh! Squeal!” The delirious scurry 
of an alarm-clock which had been smuggled 
into his desk, before the lesson, warned him 
that the period was over and Liberty had set 
in for the quarter-of-an-hour preceding the 
bell. 

He was an elderly, spectacled instructor, 
with a delicacy which claimed two-thirds of 
his attention. He frowned heavily as he 
opened his desk and shut up the madcap 
monitor. 

But he beckoned the Wastrel to him and 
conferred on the taunted waif high honor. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

“ If you Ve nothing to do later on in the 
afternoon,” he said, “you and I will go out 
alone together and call on Nature.” 

The boy flushed up to his eyes with delight, 
for the bully’s sneer still rankled in him, but 
the next moment he scandalized his backers 
among the Agora Society, the indulgent Sons 
of “Rest,” by slinking away shamefacedly, 
muttering something about being behind- 
hand with his school work and the chef want- 
ing him. 

“No such thing! He ’s not behind on his 
studies — and Mutso would spare him, if the 
instructor asked,” said Drake. 

“And he ’s as much at home among that 
stuff as a bud on a twig!” Dean nodded 
towards the class-room, with its relics of life- 
study. 

“I guess he ’s up against it with Brownell, 

that fat-faced bully,” threw in the Rev to 

whom everyone was “fat,” except himself. 
“I heard them sparring and caught the ‘after 
school’ challenge.” 

“Then we ’ll have to be there, to see that 
they have it out in proper style with the 
gloves and not like savages without them,” 

[ 148] 


THE CHALLENGE 


decided MaunserEs best boxer of the gingery 
“topper gay.” 

But, here again, Drake got a “down” — 
figuratively. 

It was he who had coached the Wastrel in 
the “fisty ” art, who had encouragingly yanked 
him to his feet In his first school boxing bout, 
when he went down, buffeted, bewildered, with 
a “Get at him, kid! You Te not dead,” who 
had taught him shoulder-blow, hook and swing. 

“He can come back with the ‘stuff,* that 
waif — if he is still rather rag-tag in some 
ways — does n*t know how to behave when a 
master pays him a compliment,** said Drake. 
“Some time we *11 have to ‘paddle* that gamin 
element out of him.** 

And at first the waif did handle himself well 
and came back with the hot stuff, to-day, upon 
the green ring of the school campus, for he 
was mad as all fury with Brownie. He stepped 
in with a blow from the shoulder, a straight 
right lead, so hard, that the bully was almost 
ready to cry : “Enough !** 

“Hi ! Hi ! Give him another one. Wastrel ! 
Go it — waif!** cried the younger pugilist*s 
backers. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


But it was at that moment that the waif, 
lifting his furious eyes, saw another face 
among the spectators — heard another voice 
cheering him tolerantly. 

And, with that, the fury in him was parched 
to funk. His right arm was a withered stick, 
his left a palsied tendril. The face was that 
of the bird-chief, Wulf, who had spoken of 
somebody helping out “plumers.’’ 

The Wastrel's gaze swam deliriously, so 
that he saw five long-armed, wide-ruling 
wardens. 

Brownie came back with a stinging upper- 
cut under the trembling jaw — and he was 
down. 

He could not defend his own honor — his 
standing in the school — because he had only 
a stained honor to defend. 

“'Never saw anything like it!" gnashed 
Drake. “Such a slump 1 I feel like ‘ditching' 
him. He was the big toad this morning — 
and, now — now, look at him, so small that a 
dozen of him could go through a needle's eye 1 " 

“And he has the makings in him of a good 
boxer 1 Perhaps he spent himself getting that 
perfect dot in the middle of the page this morn- 

[ 150] 


THE CHALLENGE 


ing/’ was Dean's mollifying comment. “You 
were going to ask Wade to take him with us 
in the flivver along the beach, to try and re- 
cover the little pocket microscope he lost, as 
ballast in the sand-sailer race, five days ago." 

“Not to-day ! I Ve got to study like fury. 
And, perhaps, not to-morrow ; I 'll think it 
over," was the red-haired scout's crestfallen 
ultimatum. “Why! hullo. Judge," he ejacu- 
lated. “Were you watching those kids?" 

The Judge tilted backward the little blue 
derby which, in relation to his head, was, so 
the Scoutmaster said, like the Judge's dis- 
course on birds, it did n't cover the subject. 

“Well! I reckon I was," he drawled ami- 
ably. “Saw the kid you 've been so favoring 
get his ‘gooser. ' Sorry, too! That Brownell 
boy has the manners of a hog-nosed snake — 
jest blows himself out and hisses — he 'll make 
that waif's life a burden to him now. Ha ! 
Well ! I must shove along. I 'm going to 
make some social calls," announced the Judge. 

“What on? The birds?" The scout looked 
humorously over the sanctuary peninsula, 
where the scattered houses numbered not a 
dozen. 


[i5ii 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


‘‘No, sir, I want t' see what gaby has moved 
into a hunter's shack up there in the woods. 
I passed it yestidday an' 't was shet up tight, 
like a clam. House shet, windows shet — yet 
't warn't empty. Why ! even t' broad love 
of the good Lord, himself, could n't get in 
there," maintained the Judge. “For me! 
I 'm a son of Nature. Gi' me air — or give 
me death 1 Yes, sir ; that 's me ; you tell 'em 1 " 

He marched grandly on into the hammock 
where Jokie raved — and thence into thicker 
woods beyond, leaving the Sons of Rest won 
from their humiliation on their protege's 
behalf by a laugh. 

“Well 1 the Wastrel is a son of Nature, too 
— or a grandson — I guess we won't ‘ditch' 
him yet," said the Rev. 


CHAPTER XIII 
A Puny Navy 

W ELL ! we ’re beyond sanctuary here 
— half-a-dozen miles, or more, from 
the school. And the birds — the 
birds seem to know it too ; they ’re not so 
thick as they are up around our ‘diggings.’” 

It was Dean who spoke, looking out over the 
green Atlantic ; the Atlantic which in distant, 
minor murmur, or major nearby thunder, 
was ever with these migrating boys- 

“We have n’t left them behind, though,” 
said the Rev. “Will you — will you look at 
the blue-faced boobies ? ’ Guess there ’s not a 

shore bird of any kind that you don’t see, one 
time or another, upon this beach!” 

“It’s a great old playground,” lauded 
Wade, leaning against his “flivver.” ‘‘Takes 
the shine out of every other ocean beach in the 


[ 153] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


world, running forty miles in a dazzling speed- 
way — such a r-race-course — except when 
the high tide is cock o’ the walk ! ” 

“Hi ! The automobile races we ’ve seen 
here; the world’s record ‘set’ !’’ purred Dean, 
complacently stroking his memory until it 
emitted sparks, like a cat. 

“Well ! I guess it has n’t given up the thing 
we came out to look for.’’ The Rev was gaz- 
ing now at two advancing figures, the one tall, 
with a bonfire for a head, in the sunshine, the 
other spare and small for its fourteen years 
and nine months — wiry, light-haired. “They 
have n’t found the Wastrel’s little microscope 
which he lost out of his pocket when he took 
my place as ballast, steadying the head of a 
Wild Goose. Oh-h! my kinks and corners, 
was n’t she a rip-per ?’’ 

“I suppose — I suppose I ought to buy him 
another one,’’ said Wade, “as I was racing 
her.’’ 

“I would n’t put myself out about it,” Dean 
whistled softly. “Not until we ‘size’ him up 
a little more. He ’s a conundrum, I guess — 
chameleon himself — there, a while ago, he 
was all agog to become a scout, now he seems 


A PUNY NAVY 


to have lost interest in it — although he could 
pass the tenderfoot test with his eyes shut. 
Well ! you have n't found it He looked up 
at the approaching pair. 

“No! We found a willet's nest, though, 
with four clay-colored eggs in it. The bird 
kept flying over our heads, crying 'Pilly- 
willet 1 Pilly-willet ! ' just to bluff us. We 
looked in an opposite direction from the way 
she took and found the nest in a marshy spot. 
But see — see the boobies I " fired off Drake 
excitedly. “They're only ‘casual' here." 

“Oh 1 a few of them frequent the sanctuary," 
said Wade; “and that covers fifteen miles; 
we 're only just beyond — its — limits." 

“Well, they 're not as numerous as their 
enemies, the clipper-rigged frigate birds. Wow ! 
Are n't they — clippers ?" Drake, the “water 
fiend," laughed. “With their slim, smart, 
shape, the beak like a level bowsprit and the 
dandy spread of sail, of wing, larger and 
stronger for their size than that of any other 
bird 1" 

“They fly the black flag, though," said the 
Rev “ Pirates they are 1 Always robbing the 
poor boobies — I 've seen 'em do it." 

[ 155] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


His eyes were on the squat Mother Bunch 
of an indigo- faced, white booby, going to and 
fro on its short legs upon the beach. 

“So have I!’' agreed Wade. I Ve often 
watched ’em, on the west coast, swoop down 
like a black and orange man-o’-war — and 
gee ! a handsome one, too — upon a black an’ 
white booby, flying home with a fish to its 
young one, and just make it disgorge ” 

“Oh! wouldn’t I like to see that?” The 
Wastrel glowed — all the disappointment over 
the non-recovery of his treasure evaporating, 
like heavy dew, under the sun of his sur- 
passing interest in the birds. “I ’ve watched 
’em, too — watched ’em from the beach near 
the school, when we went down to swim, 
seen ’em fish in mid-air, catch a little fish 
that had jumped out of water — so ‘slick’ 
they are 1” 

“Ah ! but their ‘slickest’ stunt is when they 
rest, float, stationary, on outstretched wings, 
facing the wind — just like a proud man-o’- 
war at anchor.” The Rev’s voice throbbed 
with admiration. “By gracious! here comes 
one now, flying home — home to sanctuary.” 

“I guess he has something in that scarlet 


A PUNY NAVY 


pouch under his chin, too — a fish — whether 
he came by it by fair means or foul/’ Drake 
laughed again. ‘‘But is n’t he an A i craft ?” 

He was, indeed, that black and orange man- 
o’-war bird, the orange glowing to scarlet upon 
the feathered pouch. Steadily he bore on, 
flying, now, rather low, knowing that he was 
nearing port ! 

“He never blows a siren,” said Drake, 
“never hails the rest of the fleet or sends out 
a — danger — signal. Always silent . • . 
Wha-at!” 

There was no danger signal now. Destruc- 
tion came like the bolt from a submarine. A 
shot ! A shot from the shore ! From among 
the neighboring sand-hills ! 

It hit the homing craft, the feathered craft, 
amidships. 

The gallant little man-o’-war tried to strug- 
gle on upon those proud wings, broken — 
tried, oh ! so desperately, to reach sanctuary, 
— then fluttered helplessly, all its guns spiked, 
to the water. 

“Who — who could have done it?” The 
boys gazed around. “A — a specimen hunter, 
maybe! Maybe — maybe a ‘plume-hunter,’ 

[ 157] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


the lawless kind, who wanted to sell him, for a 
specimen. 

Neff gazed, blanched and shivering — gazed 
at the fluttering thing upon the red-stained 
water. He thought he knew who might have 
fired that sudden shot from among the sand- 
hills, just as he thought he knew who might 
furtively occupy the Judge's ‘‘shet house" 
amid the home woodland — just as he knew 
who might be called upon to mail the skin of 
the man-o’-war north — himself ! 

And then, all at once, his heart was ripped 
— ripped by a cry ! A second hail ! The first, 
a piercing one, had been sent out just a second 
before as the dying bird struck the water. 

Agony had broken the dark frigate-bird's 
reticence. It was a shrill, far-reaching call of 
distress. 

At that, the boys held their breaths — 
simply held their breaths ! 

There was a rush of strong wings in the air, 
a cloudy darting of dark forms — a little fleet 
of man-o'-war birds putting forth from sanc- 
tuary, bravely putting forth, to surround the 
crippled comrade, reckless, it seemed, about 


[158] 


A PUNY NAVY 


their own safety — as to whether or not they 
perished with him. 

They circled around him, powerless to help, 
a puny little navy — yet as gallant a navy as 
ever floated. 

‘‘ By George ! that ’s a deed worthy of Uncle 
Sam — of the American Navy, which ever 
stands by.'' 

Wade's comment was a sob — the homage 
of a sob — and he was not an emotional young 
man, either. 

The others were silent — no eye dry. 

The pathetic helplessness of the scene, 
which no specimen hunter waded out to end — 
confirming the Wastrel in his feeling that he 
knew who fired the shot and that Dyke dared 
not venture forth from the sand-hills to claim 
the booty — the helplessness of the dark, 
mournful, little fleet, so loyal, so despairing, 
was heartrending. 

The Wastrel suddenly flung himself upon 
his face, his finger-nails digging convulsively 
into the sand. 

And it was at that moment that, to put it in 
the Judge's language, the broad love of the 
good Lord entered the ‘‘shet house" of his 

I 159 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


waifs heart, in a passionate turning towards 
loyalty, towards truth, a putting from him, 
at all costs, of the traitor in himself 

That evening a man, a man who could signal 
well and had other signs of having once been a 
soldier about him — a man to whom “Over 
There !” as crudely whistled by a parrot, was 
an unnerving shock — waited in vain by the 
tall woodpile on the skirts of the hammock for 
a boy to come out from the school and take 
some more boxes from him. 

Suddenly a stick, shied from afar, alighted 
near his screen. 

He put forth his hand and drew it to him, for 
to one end a note was tied. 

And that note read ; 

“You may tell or you may kidnap me — 
you 'll have an awful hard time doing it — but 
I 'll male 'em no more !" 

Spelling had foundered in the sea of grit 
which swept a Wastrel high upon its breast as 
he scrawled that note. 

“And, now, I guess I 'm ready — ready to 
take the scout oath," he said. 


[i6o] 


CHAPTER XIV 


Rough Riders 

W OWEE! Wowee! Zig, Zag, Zo! It 
took us twenty-five strokes of the 
paddle, to beat that O/’ 

It was Drake, captain of the second eighteen- 
foot canoe, who gave vent to the howl of hard- 
won triumph, panting over his paddle. 

“Humph! I thought ‘Omega’ would, 
surely, be the end of us — as well as of the 
alphabet,” bleated the Rev, calling from the 
cedar canoe ahead, of which the Scoutmaster 
was skipper. “Ah ! well 1 now we ’re getting 
on to the ‘oil’ — I wish we had a little of it to 
pour upon the troubled waters.” 

“Shucks! ’T would take a ship-load of 
balm — and ‘then some’ — to soothe this old 
tide.” The laboring comment came from Dean, 
the lengthy light-weight, canoe-mate of Drake. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“Well! We’re cr-rawling along, boys — 
about at the rate an alligator grows,” laughed 
the equally breathless Scoutmaster. “We — 
we Te storming our first fort, passing that 
Omega Oil monstrosity — on the road to the 
Big Cypress. And — we Te off, at last 1 ” 

Off, at last 1 For a whole year the Sons of 
Rest — beggarly description — and perhaps 
the Scoutmaster, too, had been looking, as 
through a powerful telescope, at this moment 

— a distant orb — wondering if they should 
ever reach it, or whether life’s chances might 
not turn it into a delusive mock-sun. 

Now they looked at the explorers’ outfit in 
each canoe, most comfortable proof that they 
were not dreaming ! At the scout tent, water- 
proof sleeping bag and mosquito netting — for 
a protection against snakes, as well as insects 

— in the brown duffle bag. 

Extra clothing in each rucksack. Two 30-30 
Winchester rifles and one twenty-gauge shot- 
gun, in case the panther might prowl too near 
the camp at night, the black bear be surprised 
in a cane-brake, or the lawless human, “hiding 
out,” the gun for wild gobblers and other extra 
grub, when necessary — no killing for killing’s 

[162] 


ROUGH RIDERS 


sake, or from the amiable impulse to hit 
something. 

Dean had the collector's outfit for the skins 
of such birds as they might be obliged to bring 
down, with taxidermist and egg-blowing in- 
struments — he sported a merit badge for 
taxidermy — while Drake held one for marks- 
manship. 

The Rev, canoe-mate ot the Scoutmaster, 
was the camera man, in charge of the photo- 
graphic outfit. 

First-aid kits, medical supplies, fishing 
tackle, with miscellany ranging from corn-meal 
to candles made up the explorers' outfit for a 
month-long trip, with who knows how many 
extra days thrown in ! 

Upwards of a week, alone, paddling and sail- 
ing, down the far-famed Indian River whose 
head-waters connected with Mosquito Inlet, 
whose semi-tropical beauties no unseeing eye 
could picture — nor its spicy glimpses into 
wild life, either, where the bear crept down at 
night, to suck the sea-turtle's eggs ! 

Thence through Jupiter Inlet and westward 
ho ! via canal to Lake Ocheecho-bee — that 
inland sea, where the adventurers might find 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


themselves up against hard paddling in cross- 
ing its great waters, or, again, out of sight of 
land in a shallow a mile or two off shore — that 
squat shore — with only the horizon beckon- 
ing to them. 

On, then, down the Miami Canal to a point 
where it curved to the south-west. There, 
canoes abandoned, left at an outlying settle- 
ment, the pioneering scouts, with a guide and a 
tenderfoot ‘'extra,'' who seemed to have no 
part in this pilgrimage of giants to the strong- 
hold of giants, would enter upon the last lap 
of the race ! The real heart-breaker ! The 
thirty-mile hike through pine-flat, swamp and 
“ pit-failed"' savannah to the snake-ridden heart 
of the Big Cypress, where rarely foot of white 
man had trodden — and, surely, never that 
of white boy ! 

Just now they were capturing the first out- 
post — a watery one, at the outer end of Mos- 
quito Inlet, before connecting by canal with 
the Indian River. There, among the shifting, 
shoaling sand-bars, where waves from the 
ocean broke, wind and tide both were trying 
out their adventurers' mettle before allowing 
them a passport. 


[164] 


ROUGH RIDERS 


It had taken many laboring strokes of the 
paddle to beat even the gaping O of the patent 
medicine sign upon a nearby shore, where 
breakers flung their white bonnets on high. 

“We can't live here," signaled the Scout- 
master to Drake, who wore no longer the 
shoulder epaulet of the patrol leader, in the 
school colors, but the green and red badge of 
the Assistant Scoutmaster below the troop 
numerals on the left sleeve of his khaki shirt. 
“We Ve got to land !" 

“How 're you going to make it?" yelled 
back the green-eyed second officer. 

The Scoutmaster — he was one who had 
taken big chances with shell and submarine, 
“across" — pointed first to two bare coquina 
ribs upon that nearest spur of shore, where 
the little coquina-shells, disintegrating to 
powder, had been cemented into solid rock — 
a third ridge rose beyond them, as a breast- 
work of the sand-hills. 

Then he grimly indicated the great waves 
bellowing in between those right and left ribs 
— and the third, the hoary old comber, shak- 
ing its mane, sweeping right over them — 
over the coquina ridge beyond. 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

‘‘There 's a ‘slick’ between those two rocks.” 
Drake, yelling at his canoe-mate, pointed to 
the panting smoothness, the glassy green, 
of hugged water. “He means — means to 
paddle in there — w-wait for the big wave, 
the comber, tr-rust to going over the ridge on 
its back. But we ’re as likely to be smashed 
against that in-ner r-rock. Heavens ! it ’s 
one — one chance out of many.” 

But the Scoutmaster, he of the light blue 
badge upon his sleeve, was taking that single 
chance, taking it as coolly as he had stood on 
the bridge of a submarine chaser, three years 
before. Would any heart or head fail him ? — 
certainly not a redhead. 

“ Go ahead ! Slide her-r in. Darn the tor- 
pedoes!” signaled Drake. “The only one 
I’m anxious about is the Wastrel.” He 
glanced at the livid tenderfoot, whose pea- 
green hue was largely the result of seasickness, 
owing to his having already consumed a pound 
of raisins with which Mutso had equipped him 
— Mutso, who felt a “break-heart,” because 
he never expected to look upon his face 
again. 

“If you find yourself in the water-r, stick 


[i661 


ROUGH RIDERS 


tight to me/’ yelled the redhead — yelling and 
gesticulating together, for now the uproar off 
shore was terrific — to that light-haired little 
lubber seated amidships of the bucking canoe. 
“Wow ! We can’t af-ford to drown you-u !” 

No ! that would be drowning Fate, as the 
red-haired scout suspected. 

“Remember, stick tight to me-e. Amber 
Jack — if you don’t want to be an angel fish 
yet!” he shrieked, anew. 

All his solicitude centred about the wet 
amber head of that little “grunt” amidships — 
vivid amid the foam as the brassy one of its 
finny namesake — while the second canoe 
rocked high, waiting to follow her intrepid 
leader directly the latter should have “done 
the trick,” shot over the bristling, inner rock 
to sanctuary among the sand-hills — on the 
back of a raging comber. 

“ Whe-ew 1 Is n’t she the rough rider 1 But 
if she smashes into the inner rock, there — 
there ’ll be an an end to the cruise — most 
likely!” Drake’s heart smashed into his ribs 
at the moment — then labored heavily in a 
breathless “slick” between them. 

For the foremost rough rider was buck- 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


ing as the comber caught her — slanting 
downward at an appalling angle, until her nose 
was almost under. 

“Back water!’' yelled the Scoutmaster. 
“Ba-ack water 1” 

The Rev, his canoe-mate, could not hear — 
misunderstood him. 

He made two paddling strokes, instead — 
and all but paddled her to the bottom. 

It was a little stone jug which saved the 
“cruise” — the master adventure — that day ; 
a humble, little brown stone water-jug. 

Carried, for convenience sake, instead of 
the regulation blue bucket, in a moment of 
inspiration it broke from its moorings at the 
Scoutmaster’s elbow. 

Uprooted by shock, it hurled itself down- 
ward — forward — hit the misguided Rev in 
the back. 

He turned, saw the look on the Scoutmas- 
ter’s face, caught the formation of the order 
upon his grim lips — backed water 1 And the 
day was saved 1 

By a miracle the canoe righted herself par- 
tially and gained her objective on the wings of 
her bold chance — went over the ridge, riding 

[i68] 


ROUGH RIDERS 


the shaggy comber, — found herself stranded, 
like an aeroplane, upon a sand-peak. 

Now she was able to extend some help to 
her fellow rough-rider of the foam ! Or her 
drenched occupants were ! 

A help which Drake, “cockerouse’' of the 
second canoe, was inclined to spurn. For had 
he not made his cruise on the real blue water — 
far out of sight of land — as a seascout ? 

Nevertheless for the Wastrel’s sake — and 
Fate’s — and a moment which, in the clear 
shining of intense danger, instinct told him was 
surely coming, he was glad as he took his 
chance that it was a twin chance — with a 
lifeline, an outflung rope, to assist. 

Quarter-of-an-hour later the canoeists were 
smudging seaweed, frying it over a slow fire, 
to hold at bay the mosquitoes — not at the 
pains, yet, to rig up their mosquito “bar” — 
the while they dried themselves and held revel 
over the storming of the first outpost — the 
outpost as it seemed to them of the Big 
Cypress. 

Dreamily they reviewed the past year, the 
struggle they had made to “pull off” this 
southern trip. 


[169] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Working during the summer, as the con- 
trary Sons of Rest had done, to earn money for 
their share in the canoes and equipment, tak- 
ing no Christmas vacation, but studying hard 
under a coach, “plugging'' equally hard ever 
since Christmas-time, so that they needed to 
take no winter term examinations, which fell 
at Easter ! 

So that, ahead in their marks and ahead of 
their class — these seniors — they could af- 
ford five weeks off, instead of the spring two, 
with still a certainty of graduating. 

The, Scoutmaster had done double duty to 
earn his adventure, too. Since the school came 
south, besides his own English classes and his 
share of discipline, he had taken the place of a 
teacher who had been left up north, ill. 

The latter would rejoin the school after the 
Easter vacation, and Scoutmaster Merle Crane 
could be spared for a few weeks — so the Head- 
master decided. 

“It is the last time that these three older 
boys, seniors, will come south for many a day, 
perhaps — the last year," remarked the man, 
whose blue eyes sparkled, as his goatee grew, 
when he was doing something quite disinter- 


[ 170] 


ROUGH RIDERS 

ested for a boy. “ I shall be sorry to lose them, 
Drake, Dean and Sharron. Their last year in 
prep school ! Before them lies — the age, of 
all others, of adventure, when even old earth is 
too small for her hotspurs who must carry 
their exploits on into the upper air — even 
into outer space itself! A hard task lies before 
these men of to-morrow to see that, amid it all, 
she does not lose her sanity, her balance — 
Mother Earth 1 And these boys will get some- 
thing — a hard polish on their mettle — from 
a trip into the inaccessible heart of the Big Cy- 
press that no other schooling could give 
them.’^ 

So far all was plain sailing I 

The hitch came when Drake tried to put 
through his plan for including a yellow-haired 
tenderfoot in the exploring party. 

The Headmaster, surprised and discourag- 
ing, referred him and his matter to the Scout- 
master. 

The redhead found the latter in a sun-parlor, 
framed in the last rose and violet rays of a 
Florida sunset, reviewing the work of some 
pupils who had been kept in detention. 

“What 1 Take that fourteen-year-old Was- 


[171I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


trelj as you call him, along with us, down to the 
heart of the Big Cypress — where no white boy 
has set foot, yet, I ’ll wager ! He could n’t 
stand the hardship,” said the Scoutmaster. 

— I ’d take half of it. I ’d undertake to 
pull him — through.” The fiery eyelashes 
were invincible points of flame. 

‘‘Oh-h ! I know you ’re a red-hot torch, 
Drake. But you don’t know what you ’re fac- 
ing. Why ! the roughest hike we ’ve taken yet 
would be a fox-trot compared to the struggle 
through a dozen miles of drying Everglades — 
after we leave our canoes and the canal — 
then on across another dozen, and more, to that 
Indian Potato Slough, our goal, the main ar- 
tery of the Big Cypress, sleeping out, with only 
those crackly palm-fans for beds. Lucky if we 
can get that !” 

“I know it!” But little sparks, white 
sparks, came and went in the greenish-gray 
eyes. Drake was still the red-hot torch. 

“You older fellows can stand it. Take 
Dean — ” the Scoutmaster chuckled — “he 
looks like a crane on stilts and is hard as a 
crocodile. The Rev — he ’ll be grunts and grit 
to his finger-tips I You — you ’re a hundred 

[ 172] 


ROUGH RIDERS 


per cent fit.’’ The speaker’s glance ran over 
the all but six-foot figure beside him. But — 
a — tenderfoot !” 

“He — he is n’t any flowerpot fellow. He 
saw some hard times for a year, knocking 
about with that crook he was with.” 

“But what — what’s the idea?” The 
Scoutmaster began to feel a little thrilled — he 
knew not why. “I know obstinacy and red 
hair are beyond curing,” with a deep chuckle. 
“ But this — this — ” 

Bristling — thrilling, too, from neck to heel, 
the other pointed through a broad glass-panel 
on which a waning sunbeam wrote a riddle, to 
two figures without. 

They were the elderly, delicate instructor in 
Natural Science, with a deeply breathing boy 
beside him, gazing excitedly at the gaudy red, 
yellow and blue, bell-shaped blossoms of the 
wild pineapple twined around a tree-trunk 
near. 

Above them in the growing dusk a broad- 
winged bat was beginning to circle. 

Breathlessly they were watching, with eyes 
all over them, to see whether a thing could take 
place here, as in tropical lands farther south, 

[ 173 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


the bat visit the glaring flower to drink of its 
sweetness, and on its mouse-like head carry the 
pollen to other plants. 

Suddenly the boy plucked a scout-hat from 
his head. As a bit of side-play to the main 
quest, he showed a deeply colored orchid — a 
purple snake-mouth — tucked into its band, 
gesticulating, all aflame, over the single blos- 
som on its green stem, so frail — so firm. 

Drake quivered all over. He straightened 
up — fire on his cheeks. 

‘‘When — when I became a scout,’* he said, 
“ I just knew a bumble-bee from a buttercup — 
that *s all ! But — but it *s where that kid 
lives — that Nature stuff. He knew more 
when he was born — ** 

The Scoutmaster stiffened electrically, too. 
Deep spoke to deep as he looked into the green 
fire of the eyes beside him. 

“Hea-vens !** he ejaculated. “I — I never 
thought of tha-at!** He whistled. “But, 
then — then — I *ve had so little to do with 
the boy. How ever did such an idea — moon- 
shine idea — come to you ?** 

The tall senior was silent a moment, his eyes 
on the figures without. 


[ 174] 


ROUGH RIDERS 

“Do — do you remember little Jean’s defi- 
nition, sir, when you asked him what a vision 
was ? ‘A vision is the thing you think you see 
when you ’re half awake and half asleep.’ It 

— it came to me like that. But now, whether 
I ’m awake or asleep, I can’t get rid of it.” 

The Scoutmaster started. It was no boy 
who spoke, now, but a man with Life’s urge 
upon him, that something immeasurably deeper 
than a try for the Adventurers’ Cup — the obli- 
gation to serve Life. 

“I ’ve said nothing to the other fellows 
about this,” he quivered presently, the fire dy- 
ing down. They — they might guy my ‘man 
in the moon’ — my wild fancy. But I — I ’d 
like to show you something.” His fingers 
shook as he held up the fragment of a photo- 
graph which he had snatched from the wind’s 
pocket on the day of the race. 

“Neff* told me that it was found in his 
father’s pocket after he was killed accidentally 

— the only clue of any kind that was found on 
him, or in the poor room he had taken a short 
time before — he was doing a vaudeville stunt 
in the cheapest little Motion Picture theatre in 
Allegheny, when he was run over by an auto- 

[ 175] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


mobile, coming out one night. It is n’t a 
picture of him!" 

The Scoutmaster studied the faded frag- 
ment. Wild-fire sparks came and went in his 
eyes — as in the eyes beside him. 

Then the “red-hot torch” drove home his 
last, fiery coup. 

He pointed to the picture. “The eyes are 
the eyes of NeflF,” he said, “but — but is n’t 
there something in them — ” 

“As — as of one who might easily be led into 
wasting himself in some fool way !” The older 
man breathed deeply. “Well-11! have your 
way, Drake. I give in. The longer I live, the 
more Life ‘beats me’ !” 


CHAPTER XV 
A Clown-Bird 

A NOTHER sanctuary ! Pelican Island ! 

J \ Every pelican on the east coast who 
goes in for mating at all breeds here 
between November and April, although some- 
times the birds hang around until June, so the 
warden says/’ 

It was the skipper of the leading canoe, the 
Scoutmaster, who spoke, as he paddled his 
cedar rough rider up a bright little bay run- 
ning off from the Indian River, some forty 
miles south of Mosquito Inlet — when the 
adventurers had been three days out. 

“ Ching-a-lacka ! Ching-a-lacka ! Did you 
ever — ever see such rubbernecking ? ” laughed 
the Rev. “ ’ Couple o’ thousand yard-long 
necks str-reaking up into the air, to see what 
we ’re up to.” 


[ 177] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


‘‘Up to landing said the deep swish of the 
Scoutmaster’s paddle, as he drove the canoe in 
towards a sandy shore which looked as if it 
was stuck all over with white wooden ten- 
pins, having the head of a bird carved upon 
them. 

“Like an island of totems !” Drake whistled. 
“Whew ! You never thought you ’d see any- 
thing like that, did you Neff — you gr-reedy 
little raisin-sharking lubber — ’ guess I was a 
fool to bring you !” 

“Yes, but let you say it !” chipped in Dean. 

But the Wastrel, the Amber Jack, had now 
got over the combined effects of raisins and 
rocking, which had almost made an angel fish 
of him, indeed. 

“Why — why have they that little brown 
mane along the backs of their necks, the older 
birds?” he asked quickly. “A few of them 
have n’t ; the necks are all white. 

“That — oh! that’s the little toothbrush 
moustache the pelican grows when he begins 
to make love,” explained the Rev, as the 
canoes were shoved up on to the low, sandy 
beach. He has nowhere else to grow one ; his 
head ’s all beak, it seems — solemn beak.” 


[178] 



Among the swarming ground-nests. Page ijg 


4 



4 /- 


A CLOWN-BIRD 


‘‘Solemn! Well! I should smile. He’s 
the undertaker among the birds — this Florida 
brown Pelican/’ got off Dean again. 

“ But, ye gods ! the number of nests — 
fifteen hundred or more upon the island.” 
Drake, who had the faculty of putting two 
and two together, whether figuratively or in 
dead reckoning, was taking the census at a 
glance. “We’ll have hard — hard work to 
perambulate among them, those weedy ground- 
nests, without stepping on the rubbering 
chicks.” 

“We were lucky, as scouts, to get a permit 
to land here — and further permission to 
spread our ponchos on the sands of that 
island spur and sleep there to-night, so ’s to 
see the sights, hear the sounds, when the 
nursery awakes in the morning,” said the 
Scoutmaster “Now’s your chance for bird- 
study — Neff!” 

The Wastrel was making the most of that 
chance already. Threading his charmed way 
among the swarming ground-nests, as if the 
island reservation were his native heath, he 
had brought up before two half-grown strip- 
lings upon a nest of weeds and twigs. 

[ 179] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


The leathern pouches under their chins, 
their green ration-bags, had already developed ; 
their wings were slowly approaching the splen- 
did, seven-foot spread of the Florida pelican ; 
the long, hook-nosed beaks gave them the ap- 
pearance of a pair of dignified long-nosed 
princelings according a reception to out- 
siders. 

“Wow! I believe that Wastrel can 
simply talk their lingo,'' laughed Drake. 

“Shouldn't be surprised I They're so 
tame," said the Rev. “A case of: 

“Plumpskin, pluffskin, pelican jee, 

We think no birds so happy as we, 

Plumpskin, ploshskin, pelican jill, 

We think so then and we thought so still ! 

“But, gee! I'm no plump-skin," he added 
plaintively. “I feel shrunken to a shaving 
after that long, hungry paddle. How about 
landing some grub from the canoes, eating our 
cold snack on the beach — if we may not build 
a fire ?" 

And it was during the evening meal that 
followed, eaten to the orchestra of young birds 
croaking, squawking, clamoring for a supper 
from some returning mother, with a neck full 


[ i8o] 


A CLOWN-BIRD 


of fish, that the scouts were treated to a rare 
— rare bit of the burlesque of bird-life. 

“See that great, rubbering pelican out there 
on the sand-spit!'' said the Scoutmaster. 
“An old bach', I guess — no brown moustache 
on the back of his neck — there are such among 
them 1" 

“‘Bach'!' He's a monk — a prophet!" 
gasped Drake. “No gay, bachelor-frills about 
him ’ Gee ! his dignity would, make the 
starchiest prof look flighty." 

The solemn, long-beaked “prophet" had 
the sand-spur all to himself, at this evening 
hour, so far as his own tribe were concerned. 
Only a little yellow-footed herring-gull hopped 
near, the gaffir among shore-birds, hoping for 
some pickings from the prophet's meal. 

“Whew! Up he goes! There he starts to 
fish," said the Rev. “Isn't he a champion 
diver ? " as the stately pelican, four feet in 
length from the tip of his record beak to the 
end of his diminutive tail, suddenly rose into 
the air on majestic wing, sailed about a little, 
then spying from on high a fish, dived a 
straight twelve feet and came up with the prey 
in his pouch — his green prophet's pouch. 


[i8il 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


‘‘He's solemn as a seer, even now," 
chuckled the Scoutmaster. “But — will you 

— look there !" 

For when was the seer ever safe from the 
tyranny of the small ? 

That was the moment when the impudent 
little herring-gull, with the yellow clown's feet 

— the white clown's spots upon his wings — 
saw his opportunity. 

It was the moment of the prophet-pelican's 
tumble from the sublime to the ridiculous — 
before the entranced eyes of the scouts. 

For as the great bird rose again, to sail 
around, and spy upon another fish, what — 
what did that chunked little gull do but sneak 
aloft, too, and perch upon his back. 

Slily perch upon the prophet's back for a 
ride around the island — and up and down the 
bay ! While the human watchers looked om 
convulsed ! 

“Well! for a hazing stunt that beats — 
beats anything I ever saw!" gasped Dean. 
“B-beats even Wade's night with a wild 
donkey ! By gr-racious ! so it does. That 
little yellow-footed ‘jock 'has you ‘skun a 
mile' — Rev !" 


A CLOWN-BIRD 


The little jockey-gull seemed to think so, 
too. Saucily he tilted his snip of a yellow beak 
as much as to say: ‘‘Look where / am — 
boys What d' you think of this for a stunt 
to put over 

It was, indeed, a laughable stunt, if ever 
there was one. 

Even the red-robed sun seemed splitting his 
sides over it. 

He had actually sunk below the horizon, 
and the island had been circled several times 
by the feathered steed and the yellow-footed 
little clown on horseback, before the pelican 
could dislodge his unwelcome rider — and, 
alighting on the sands near the hooting spec- 
tators, scratch his ear noisily with his foot, to 
erase the insult. 

“Well-11 ! if that is n't the best show I ever 
saw. Movies — movies are n't in it !" gasped 
Drake. 

“It might even make a good story of Life 
for the Adventurers' Cup — if one could de- 
liver it without spilling the laugh — any of 
it," said the Rev. “Judges like to be tickled." 

But the red-haired scout shrugged his 
shoulders ; from his look one might judge that 


[183] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


he felt himself to be on the trail of a more 
telling story still — and it would not be bur- 
lesque. 


CHAPTER XVI 
The Egg-Eater 

‘^^^WEET Pa-too-tie ! Has n't he — has n't 
he been having a b^ow-out ? He has only 
just left them, by gracious ! We 've 
broken up his tea-fight — his party." 

“Whose party? What are you ranting 
about, now — loon ?" 

For answer the Rev pointed to the moist re- 
mains on the festive board ; to the white sands 
all smeared over with egg-nog, just above tide- 
line — to the damp, warm egg-shells lying 
around. 

“Sam Slick's! Sam Bear's! Humph! 
you 'd ‘rant,' too, if you had just missed get- 
ting a snapshot of him at supper. Now ! how 
many pounds of turtle's eggs d' you suppose 
he has made away with ? There must — there 
must have been hundreds of the greeny-white 

[185] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


eggs here, judging by the ‘too much plentee 
egg-shell/ as Mutso would say/' 

Thus did Sharron reply to Drake's “loony" 
challenge, the latter having come on the run 
at the “ Sweet Pa-too-tie ! " outburst. 

“And here — here's where Fannie Turtle 
— sister to the dragon that nearly capsized 
our sand-sailer — laid eggs by the bushel in 
that circular hole in the sands — then retired 
to the sea, paying no further attention to 
them!" Drake was equally excited now. 

“And Hardshell Tommy never paid any 
attention to them, at all. So along came Sam 
Slick with : ‘Nuts for me !'" chuckled the Rev. 

“Well! he was ‘slick' enough to see us 
before we saw him — and left half his meal 
unfinished. Gee ! how I wish we had caught 
him at it," came from Drake. “I guess he 
would n't have put up any fight. The bears 
down here are half-domesticated — otherwise 
slinkingly scared. Ha ! The other fellows 
must come in on this." 

He blew two short whistles with the scout- 
whistle at his belt, grunting loudly, also — 
the grunting bellow of the bull-alligator — 
signal of the Alligator Patrol to which Dean 


[i86] 


THE EGG-EATER 


and Sharron belonged — of which he himself 
had been a member until, with Easter, he rose 
from the ranks and became a scout officer. 

“He has left us a jolly lot of eggs to fry — 
Sammy Bear has. White wings ^ My 
inside is crying cupboard,” bleated the Rev. 

“As the Irishman up north said to me when 
he found a land-turtle’s egg, almost hatched 
out, in his potato-row: ‘Glory be to God ! for 
giving us the bit of meat with the potatoes.’” 
Drake chuckled. “The Scoutmaster will be 
for leaving a few of theni, I guess,” he went on, 
“although Hardshell Fannie would never 
come back to shed mock-turtle tears over 
finding none in the hole where she shoveled 
sand over them, trusting to the warmth to 
hatch them out.” 

“Ha! I’m for leaving a few score, too,” 
said Sharron. Then maybe Sam Bear, know- 
ing by instinct or sagacity that there ’s still a 
place for him, will come back, to settle the 
score. Then — then I ought to be able to 
snapshot him, even at midnight. With the 
help of that strong searchlight I could get a 
‘good un’ 1” 

“No — no knowing how he ’d behave under 

[187] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


it/' put forth the other scout. ‘‘He might 
take it for lightning — lightning that hung 
fire — be bewildered, char-rge right in among 
us. Humph ! I 'm ready to take a chance on 
it, if you are." 

“Wow! I 'm a son of Spunk too. That 's 
me ; you tell 'em 1 With apologies to the 
Judge!" laughed Sharron. “Gee! don't I 
wish we could lure him with the bull's eye — 
red bull's eye bound around your blistered 
brows — which so hypnotized that old alli- 
gator, last night. Ha ! I 'll never forget him, 
that huge, twelve-foot 'gator cr-rawling out 
from under the black mangrove bushes almost 
up to the canoe — his little eyes dull red coals. 
Got a smashing good picture, too !" 

“ I believe, if you had your way, you 'd turn 
that bull's eye on the bear, you old hazer," 
laughed Drake. “ I guess you have a mosquito 
in the salt-box, like the Wild Man of the 
swamp." 

“Well ! before the night is over the bear may 
be ‘hazing' us." The photographer shrugged 
his shoulders. “Anyhow — I'm going to 
tickle him with — the — searchlight !" 

And when the other members of the explor- 

[i88] 


THE EGG-EATER 


ing party joined the two by Fannie Turtles’ 
rifled incubator, they were equally anxious 
for a snapshot of the egg-eater at his junket. 

‘‘ I don’t mind sitting up all night. Let’s try 
a fresh beat, by all means !” said Dean — the 
crane on stilts. 

“Ten to one, ’twill be the bear’s ‘beat,’ 
not ours, especially if this one should turn out 
to be a mammy, not a Sammy,” chuckled 
Drake. “Look here — here where he — she, 
I guess — has been sharpening her claws 
against this cabbage palm — eating some of 
the buds too, by gracious ! ” 

“I ’ll wager it is some ravening old she- 
bear — or she ’d hardly be so eager after the 
food that drops into the nest, so to speak!” 
The Scoutmaster drew a long breath. “Not 
if she was free to roam far, lie in wait for hours, 
charge in among some ‘dusting’ wild turkeys 
— an’ nab a gobbler, or two 1 This Indian 
River country is full of ‘mast,’ food of all 
kinds, for wild animals. ” 

“Oh, heavens 1 He whose stomach is full in- 
creaseth deeds of evil ! ” The Rev rolled his 
eyes up. “I had to ‘drub’ out that proverb in 
Hebrew with the Pater once, after I ’d been 


[ 189] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


taken ill in church — r-right in the middle of 
his Christmas sermon — from eating too much 
candy.” 

Well ! speculation was rife during the beach- 
meal that followed, at which some of the 
loggerhead turtle's eggs did figure, as to the 
effect which high living might have upon a 
mother bear — whether to increase or de- 
crease evil towards humankind. 

“Ouch! It may be like scr-ratching one's 
‘bean' with a firebrand to turn the limelight 
on her, at all,'' said Drake. “Still I 'm game 
— only we may forfeit our snores and then 
never even get a glimpse at her. The Wastrel 
at all events, ought to turn in.'' 

“T-too — too hot!” mumbled the tender- 
foot — and almost tumbled into the kettle. 

“Yes — yes, the heat is in tents to-night,” 
chuckled Dean, pointing to the white scout 
tents which had been erected, blossoming 
fungi-like out of the growing darkness. 

“Hum-m ! That pun would floor even the 
bear. We're in for a thunder-storm, I think.” 
The Scoutmaster diagnosed the night-sky. 

But that which was threatened did not 
come, while the scouts took up their position, 

[190] 


THE EGG-EATER 


their ambushed position, to leeward of the 
plundered beach-incubator where, if left alone, 
the hundreds of greenish-white eggs would 
have hatched out in about seven weeks into 
young sea-turtles that would paddle their own 
canoe from the moment they were born, using 
their baby flippers in some quiet cove much as 
a young bird uses its wings. 

Threatening clouds blew over and in “the 
dark o' the moon" which did not rise until 
nearly daybreak, the Indian River burned 
with all its phosphorescent beauty — holding 
a special illumination, it seemed, in honor of an 
American Legionary, the Scoutmaster, with, 
somewhere, a distinguished service medal 
tucked away in his khaki. 

Mullet, so thick that “ you could skate down- 
stream on them," wonderful whip-rays, ray- 
fish, bass and even the silver king himself, the 
six-foot tarpon, all bathed in phosphorescent 
glow, their leaping fins dripping radiance, 
made a golden river, a fairy river, which, flow- 
ing over the boys' senses, kept them soothed 
and spellbound in the long hours while they 
waited for an egg-eater's return. 

Again they tried to get the Amber Jack, the 

[ 191 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


yellow-haired tenderfoot, to turn in, but he 
kept close under the lee of Drake, holding his 
breath now and then when some wonderful 
night-fairy, a large golden moth, brushed by 
his face. 

“He follows him like St. Anthony’s dog,” 
murmured the Rev, looking at the two — the 
Rev with his photographing equipment all in 
readiness. “ Sing Lo ! Lo ! what ’s this I hear : 
‘It is-s de ’possum at his ease’ . . . It is — ” 

It was! The rainy rustle of the saw pal- 
metto nearby, the broad-leaved palm scrub, 
was swelling — crashing — into low thunder 
— toy thunder I It parted. Forth plunged a 
black, hunching form — and in another mo- 
ment was nosing among the egg-shells on the 
beach, where human cunning had left just one 
egg dropped from the shell upon the sands — 
an island of irresistible lure.” 

“Now-ow!” breathed Dean shakily, stif- 
fening at the Rev’s elbow. “R-ready! 
Shoot 1” 

“ Fi-ire when you get ready — Gridley,” 
softly barked Drake. 

And the lightning broke. A brilliant flash- 
light streaked the beach. Wonderful, spangled 

[ 192 1 


THE EGG-EATER 

wing-fairies danced in it, up and down upon a 
golden ladder — attendant on the bear’s feast. 

It was a sight almost to stagger the camera. 

But it clicked. 

“Woof! Oof!” A startled grunt from the 
egg-eater ! A black, triangular head was 
raised, lifted momentarily in the scouts’ direc- 
tion — the jaws dripping egg-nog. 

“Be — be ready to tip your rags a gallop,” 
hiccoughed Dean. “No-o knowing what that 
shaggy — Rube — ” 

But the four-footed Rube was already tip- 
ping her fur a gallop, charging headlong — 
bewildered — the lightning that was chained ! 

Never did human rags take a ‘tip’ more 
quickly ! Breezing as in a hurricane, they 
made for the shelter of the sand-hills — for the 
championship of the Scoutmaster’s “buddy” 
— the Rev doubling over the camera. 

But — but in that wild “patatrot” scurry 
there was a sound which bit the ear of the 
mother-bear. A taint on the air that stung 
her eggy nostrils ! 

Back in the cane-brakes, not a mile from 
here, two cubs were waiting for her. 

“There — the-ere she goes — hopping the 


[ 193 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


twig!” squealed the Rev. “But — IVe got 
her picture I” 

But not as she was a moment later — car- 
toon of absurdity ! 

Mad as all fury, dazzled by the brilliant, 
fourth-proof lightning, the pell-mell darkness, 
the she-bear, swerving, hopped the twig — 
otherwise a neighboring sand-hill — blindly 1 

Right into the scout camp she lumbered — 
and all but knocked over a tent, while Dean, 
from afar, piped : 

“Oh 1 my outfit 1 my egg-blowing — instru- 
ments !” 

She struck an out-lying flour-bag in her 
way, ripped it at a blow, nosed curiously into 
it — and made for the palm-scrub, a powdered 
bear — enameled all over, egg and flour. 

“Well 1 this has been a wild night. W-wild- 
est yet 1” 

It was Drake, furiously blowing — just as 
soon as anybody could speak, for panic and 
laughter. 

So wild it had been that, though tired from 
long paddling, he could not sleep. Daybreak 
saw him out of his tent, straying along the 
beach in that most magical moment of all, 


THE EGG-EATER 


when moonlight quivers into dawn — and all 
the valleys are dim mist. 

It tamed the adventurer’s heart. “So-o 
much beauty !” cried that awed heart to him. 
“It seems — oh-h ! it seems as if a fellow ought 
to do something with it.” 

And then he was doing something with it — 
besides painting his memory. 

For there is that in the true adventurer 
which can rarely stop short of the greatest 
adventure of all — the adventure into the Un- 
known, to find a Heavenly Father. 

In his questing soul the boy — like David 
of old, herding his father’s flocks — knew that 
he had found the Great Spirit. 

The moonlight whispered : pray. The 
flushing dawn said ; pray. The adventurer 
knew that he was praying ; the prayer of a son 
who was, for the moment, absorbed in his 
Father, giving his secret into the pocket of the 
Infinite, the vision which had come to him as 
the thing you think you see when you ’re half 
awake and half asleep ! Praying that neither 
danger nor difficulty should halt him short of 
a lone lair at the heart of the Big Cypress — 
that lair which only the Indian knew. 


[195] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


A sound nearby startled him. He turned. 
Turned to see the boy who followed him like 
St. Anthony’s dog ! 

“You-ou — Neff!” 

But Neff had his finger to his lips. Like a 
spirit of the dawn he silently beckoned — 
beckoned away from the shore to the top of a 
low cliff, whose heart was of coquina rock. 

“S-something to show' you!” he breathed 
then. ‘‘On the strict Q . . . t!” 

On the “strict quiet” they stole to the top 
of the dimly outlined cliff. 

*‘The-ere she is — again 1” 

Yes ! there she was again, the shaggy egg- 
eater. On the edge of daybreak, undaunted by 
her wild night, she was tossing a fish into the 
air, for a little yellow cub to catch. 

Another “woofed” timidly at the ripples’ 
edge, watching her. 

“She ’s teaching them to — fish.’' 

Drake’s heart, melted at the moment, 
yawned wide open. He had never known a 
mother’s care himself. 

“Well! if that isn’t the humanest thing. 
And the one that ’s afraid to venture in — 
j-just like a frightened kid ! There she ’s 

[196] 


THE EGG-EATER 


splashing back now, coaxing him — c-coaxing 
him out! Patting him!'' The Wastrel's 
voice had a wider crack in it than his. 

Together they lay and watched the Spirit 
of Motherhood — Motherhood at the break 
of day. 

“Oh-h 1 but the Rev will never forgive me if 
I don't let him have a chance at this — and 
he 's shared his mother with me, at times. 
Although there 's little light for a picture 1" 

Drake was starting up on the dead Q . . . t, 
when a sob beside him shook the shell-heart of 
the cliff. 

“Tha-at's something I never had: any — 
any of it ! " The Wastrel was shaking savagely 
— turned inside out as he had been over the 
chameleon — while he looked down upon the 
river into which little rushes of red were steal- 
ing, under cover — upon the clumsy figure of 
the still plastered mother-bear, divided be- 
tween the two kiddies, her peaked face slob- 
bering over the timid one — her wild paw 
tenderly stroking him. 

Restlessly she waded to and fro. 

never had any of it — a-any," gnashed 
the Wastrel — and bit his poverty into the 


1 197 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURER’S CUP 


ground. “I — I — I'm the kid, who, as 
Dyke says, does n’t even know his own mon- 
arch — his own name!” 


[198) 


CHAPTER XVII 
A Demon Hazer 

T he soldier heron fishing just ahead 
of us — standing in the water — and 
yet we 're out of sight of land !" 

This phenomenon, as announced by the Rev, 
held all canoeists speechless for a minute. 

“ By George ! that 's the queerest thing I Ve 
seen in my travels," came breathlessly from the 
Scoutmaster. ‘‘We can't be more than three 
or four miles from shore — and yet we can 
only see the horizon." 

“A man told me toploftily yesterday that — 
that his house was the highest in the county — 
twenty-one feet above sea-level ! What d' ye 
know about that !" chuckled Dean. 

It was several days later. Paddling inde- 
fatigably, hoisting their little leg o' mutton sail 
on a nine-foot mast when the wind was favor- 


[ 199] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


able, making on an average twenty or twenty- 
five miles a day, the adventurers had reached 
Jupiter Inlet at the southern end of the magical 
Indian river. 

Thence they had followed the canal through 
into Lake Ocheechobee, that inland sea, forty 
miles, or more, in width, whose great waters 
might treat them to turbulent times in crossing 
it — and yet again be calm as a shallow lagoon 
where, as now, fishing a short distance off 
shore, in company with their old friend the 
feathered “rookie,’' they were out of sight of 
land. 

“Yes, it’s hardly credible that the sur- 
rounding country could be so low — and yet 
be a top-notcher for beauty,” said the Scout- 
master. “Jove! that fairy creek we explored 
yesterday — solid rafts of wild hyacinths.” 

“And — and the heart-break of shoving a 
canoe through them. Oh-h 1 my grueling 
shoulder-blades,” groaned Drake. “Ki Yi ! 
What ho ! A bite 1” 

“Tarpon!” chaffed the Scoutmaster — but 
it was only a six-pound bass that had hit the 
hook with a bang. 

Seated amidships of each gliding canoe, with 
[ 200 ] 


A DEMON HAZER 


the butt of a stout bamboo rod fitting into the 
leather socket upon a fisherman’s belt, the two 
canoe captains were enjoying the royal sport 
of trolling for tarpon here in the ‘'inland sea/’ 
but without the ecstasy of getting even a 
strike — a bite. 

They had beheld him, though, the Silver 
King, king of edible fishes, when — most radi- 
ant of tinseled acrobats — he had leaped 
twelve feet out of water after a mullet that had 
become, for the moment, a flying fish, too. 

“Ha ! I guess it ’s Wade who ’ll have all the 
tall tarpon-yarns of strikes an’ dashes and 
soaring spurts, of playing the king until he ’s 
exhausted — and bringing back a trophy — a 
shining tarpon-scale. He ’s fishing for the 
Adventurers’ Cup, all right, off there to west- 
ward in the Gulf!” Dean glanced westward 
ho 1 in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico. 

“Bah! who’s envying him? Not we!” 
Drake had landed his bass. “As — for the 
Cup ! ” He turned his gaze southward ; more 
and more did the game seem to him above, in- 
finitely above the prize — this game of Life 
which he was playing. “How — how about 
putting for shore now. Skipper,” he hailed 

[201 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


the sister canoe, and over to Lake Hicpoochee, 
to watch the niggers fishing for horned pout — 
shipping ’em in tons out west for Mississippi 
catfish,” laughingly. 

“R-right you are!” nodded the Scout- 
master. “I ’m glad we decided to rest for a 
couple of days, to do the lake and its surround- 
ings,” he added. “We Ve been going it strong 
since we started.” 

“So strong that, gee! I ’d like to get out 
into the country for a while — and burn up 
daylight, doing nothing,” murmured the Rev. 

“Humph ! ’ Takes you to do it !” chorused 
his canoe-mates. 

Two hours later, however, they were all 
playing fiddle-faddle in the afternoon sunlight, 
sitting on the shores of Lake Hicpoochee, a 
beautiful little lakelet, watching the ebony 
fishermen emptying the pout, alias catfish, in 
shoals from their nets, cleaning them there 
and then, and tossing them into boxes for 
shipping. 

“Well! ‘I ’ll be split and salted!’ if that 
is n’t the first time I ever knew a pig could be 
amphibious,” cried Drake. “Get on to them, 
will you, wading out — those razor-backs — 


[ 202 ] 


A DEMON HAZER 


until only the peak of a backbone is visible, 
after the cleanings!” 

“Yes, heads under water, nosing the 
bottom, most of the time!” came from Dean. 
“They’re as good fishermen as the darkies 
themselves.” 

“Now that I Ve seen a pig again, I want to 
see a cow — and get a drink of real milk. Let ’s 
push out into the ‘cracker’ country and hunt 
up one,” pleaded Sharron. 

But he did n’t get his bumper of fresh milk 
— for the spirit of mischief and “burning up 
daylight” had got into him. 

It was a good grazing country, back where 
they pushed, chiefly prairie and occupied by 
“cracker” farms, the poorer class of the south- 
ern whites — although the cattle, for a won- 
der, were not “poor.” 

They roamed the grassy savannah, lusty 
and full of vim. 

“Now — I’m going to make the old cow 
quake,” said the Rev, with a spark in his eye 
which consumed all hopes of a milkshake. 
“Look at that young bull, ‘mild as a bull-pup,’ 
but if he drinks any more water, he ’ll be so 
podgy his own mammy won’t know him.” 

[203] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 

On the open prairie nearby, with its willowy 

islands — not islands at all, but tiny ponds 
where the willows grew — and its flower-lined 
pools, exquisitely inlaid, there was besides all 
these a sunken well, boarded off from the herd. 

A wooden bucket stood beside it, with a 
little water in the bottom. The athletic 
young bull, frisky as a kitten, had visited all 
the islands and pools in sight to quench his 
thirst — and now turned to the bucket. 

Having licked up the clear well-water in it, 
he tilted it up on end with his horns, to get, 
perchance, a few more drops. 

That was the graceless Rev’s opportunity. 
Light as a Matador, he hove alongside and 
jammed the bucket down upon the young 
bull’s head. 

It caught upon his horns. 

And then — then there was pandemonium. 

Without the ingenuity of the wild animal — 
the black bear, for instance — who would 
have tried to get rid of such an unwelcome 
helmet by lying down and rolling over, knock- 
ing it against stone and tree, the bull simply 
bolted with it. Blindly bolted ! 

Off he went over the prairie, with his snort- 

[204] 


A DEMON HAZER 


ing, tilted head in a bag — or worse still in a 
bucket ! 

And off went the old cow after him. 

Off went the whole fifty head of cattle 
loosely dotting the prairie, on the maddest 
rampage. 

Forming into a sweltering line behind the 
bravo bull, swaggering in his headgear, yet, 
somehow, dodging pitfalls, they made the 
ground shake with their madcap stampede. 

More still ! Two skittish young horses, 
picketed near, jumped a sod-fence and came in 
on the fun — pursued the bull, too. 

And the chub-faced Rev looked on with the 
wondering innocence of a cherub. 

“Well! you Ve done it now,’’ gasped the 
Scoutmaster, for once thrown off his balance 
— like the professor when he found the half- 
wild donkey in Wade’s room. 

He did not know whether to court-martial 
the offender or to make allowance for the fact 
that mettle fiery enough to tackle a hike into 
the heart of the Big Cypress, must sometimes 
throw off unruly sparks. 

And still the madness of cattle went on, the 
pounding of hoofs, the snickering laughter of 

[205] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


horses — the old cow, quite demoralized, ever 
in the lead after the helmeted young bull. 

A distant black dot on the prairie, a two- 
legged human figure, settled the mode of pro- 
cedure in the minds of the Rev's comrades. 

‘‘If it 's a cow-puncher, a peppery cracker, 
he may come for us with a gun ; his motto may 
be: ‘Shoot first! And explain later!' And 
we don't want any ructions this trip. We 'd 
better ‘beat it,'" said the Scoutmaster. 
“Heavens! Rev, I pity your congregations 
in the sweet by-and-bye if your sermons don't 
hold water better than that bucket will do 
after the bull has got through with it." 

“I pity them, any way, if he ever turns his 
monkey loose on them," said Drake, as the 
adventurers made for cover in the nearest 
pine-hammock, and thence through crackling 
palm-scrub back to the little lake — and the 
sane company of amphibious pigs. 


[206] 


CHAPTER XVIII 

A Strolling Razor-Back 

M ore cattle l And this time scrawny 
enough, indeed, to make the old cow 
quake 

Dean, the “crane on stilts,’' made the 
remark, having come into the company of his 
own, for he was in crane country now — the 
land of the sand-hill crane — whose love- 
making antics, leaping and bowing, the ad- 
venturers had seen now and again, and heard 
its shrill, trumpet-like call on the border of 
some dark slough, or swampy channel. 

And the country of the sand-hill crane was 
the El Dorado of their dreams — a savage El 
Dorado, if ever there was one — for it was on 
the threshold of the Big Cypress region, the 
land of the Big Snake — the home of the tree 
Titans. 


[207] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

Two days before they had left their canoes 
and the canal — the canal by which they had 
traveled southward from Lake Ocheechobee 
at an Everglade point, just a dozen miles 
from that outer edge of the Cypress realm. 
The trusty canoes had been stored in a 
hunter’s cabin which, as the canals drained 
the Everglades and the “wicked” saw-grass 
died, had gathered a little oasis farm around it, 
which in the rainy season was almost as 
amphibious as the fishing pigs. 

The gray shack built of cypress and set on 
^yp^^ss posts, six feet from the ground, was 
owned by two swamp-hunters named Dixon 
and it was the younger brother, Dixie Minor, 
as the boys called him, who was to act as 
their guide to Indian Potato Slough at the 
very heart of the Big Cypress, where very 
rarely the foot of white man had trodden — 
and, surely, never before that of white boy. 

At Dixie’s advice, as it was to be a hiking 
expedition through a wilderness which, as 
the guide said, would, at times, “make a 
saint swear creation blue,” even the tents 
were ^ left behind, only the friendly “home 
bar, ” or mosquito netting — to serve, too, 

[208] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


as a protection against inquisitive snakes — 
taken along. 

The explorers, bearding the lion of hardship 
in his den, grittily faced the prospect of 
sleeping out, perhaps, on the hard savannah, 
or on the edge of a swamp, if a bed of scrub- 
pine, or the crackly palmetto-fans, was not 
procurable — trusting to their rubber blankets 
and warm sleeping-bags. 

With their rifles they took only such stores 
as would sustain life for a week or two in a 
country where game was plenty — and turkey 
suggestive of Thanksgiving — - most of the 
extra weight outside of the ordinary scout 
packs being distributed between the shoulders 
of the guide and those of the seasoned Scout- 
master. 

Drake, however, also carried double trouble. 
He ‘‘hauled'’ the tenderfoot's pack with his 
own. Away back amid civilization he had 
promised to take half the hardship off those 
slight shoulders of the Wastrel — whose ach- 
ing cry, wrung from him by a bear's tender- 
ness, that he was “ the kid who did n't even 
know his own monarch — his own name — " 
still hurt his ears. 


[209] 


drake and the adventurers^ cup 


And he kept his fiery pledge. 

But the tenderfoot proved that, if nameless, 
he was tameless as the best of them, so far as a 
fourteen-year-old’s strength could go. 

“ I prom-ise to keep on my pins all the time 
to stay up — if only — only you’ll take 
me along ! ” he had said desperately when 
Drake first broached to him the subject of 
this Easter expedition. 

And it was no fear of Brownie which put 
wildness into the plea; no! it was an ever- 
haunting dread of the plume-hunter. Dyke — 
Dyke of whom he had heard nothing since he 
hurled at the wood-pile his ultimatum, made 
fast to the end of a stick. 

He stood now^ his light ‘‘cotton-top” 
yellowed, indeed, by the sun into the brassy 
head of an amber-jack, in the adventurer’s 
boots of cow-hide, with their tough soles of 
horse-hide, which could plow through swamp 
or ford slough and yet remain pliable, and the 
pigskin puttees, reaching well up, to defy 
snakes stood at Dean’s elbow, looking at 
the scrawny cattle, with a few razor-backed 
pigs among them — scrawny enough, in truth, 
to make the old cow quake 1 


[210] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


The light-haired tenderfoot was quaking 
still, deep down at his roots, from an experience 
through which he had just come. 

The half-wild cattle, roaming the savannah 

— or plain studded with mud-holes from which 
now and again the bellowing grunt of a bull- 
alligator was heard — had strayed down from 
the north, whereas the explorers on leaving the 
canal had struck due west and before coming 
out upon the prairie had a nightmare of a 
swamp to cross. 

‘'How about my back, shrimp Drake had 
said. “I ’ll ferry you over. Deanie and the 
Rev will haul our packs between them.” 

But the tenderfoot shook his head, turning 
livid the next moment at the uncoiling terrors 
of a deadly water moccasin on which he almost 

— almost stepped as he jumped over a wind- 
fall, a fallen tree. 

He had a numbing vision of four feet of 
olive-green snake, just breathing venom, of a 
stumpy tail, an angry head raised to strike, 
a yellow-plated upper lip that grinned at him 

— bearing the foul white cotton-mouth within. 

And he was calling himself a dead tender- 
foot at the moment that the Scoutmaster’s 


[2II 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


rifle, ever ready, knocked that fungus-like 
mouth off the moccasin’s body. 

*'Well ! have you learned your place on this 
mud-crunching outfit now ? How about my 
back now-ow?” asked the red-haired scout 
rather irritably. 

The Wastrel looked at the circular swamp 
ahead of him — horrid little black pools and 
noisome threads of water, from which harmless 
water-snakes were jumping, through fear of 
the cannibal moccasin, so the guide said, fish 
being scarce — at the tangle of rank vines 
that might be alive with venom, the wild 
smilax, or wait-a-bit — true to its name. 

‘H — I guess I ’ll cross it on my own pegs,'* 
he decided. 

“And stout timbers they are for tenderfoot's 
shanks!" laughed the Scoutmaster. “Some 
game blood in him — somewhere I " The 
leader looked at Drake. Drake looked ahead 
towards the Big Cypress. 

“ Slogging a-long, singing our song! ” 

The members of the Alligator Patrol, the 
mud-crunching outfit, grunting as they plowed 
their way through mud, waist-deep, aired the 
line as a slogan. 


[212] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


But through Drake’s mind another slogan 
was ringing — Drake who ended, as he desired, 
by carrying the Wastrel where the swamp 
would have swallowed him. 

And his marching song was one which he 
had picked up from his fighting uncle — a 
fellow redhead : 

“ Carry on ! Carry on ! 

Fight the good fight and true. 

Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer, 
There *s big work to do — and that *s why you ^re here ! 

Carry on! 

And as he shouldered double trouble, he 
felt, the mettlesome redhead, that something 
big was laid upon his shoulders to do — and 
that was why he was here ! 

Something beside which the Adventurers’ 
Cup and even the adventure itself paled ; 
something in which Life and he were buddies, 
to bring a strange thing about ! 

But somebody else had a mission in the Big 
Cypress belt, too, as the scouts discovered 
before they were half-way across the prairie, 
where the hatchet-faced cattle backed away 
from them half-shyly, half menacingly — and 
the pigs were wild enough almost to justify a 
boar-hunt. 


[213] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


jewji jiggers!^' Dean’s neck was 
suddenly stretched by the uncouth exclama- 
tion. “Those aren’t cows off there — those 
little black spots against the horizon ! ” 

“If I was to ma-ake a r-right smart guess,” 
drawled Dixie, “I’d say they was mules — 
mules and a human !” 

“A human ! ” It was a wild chorus from his 
companions, as they strained their eyes towards 
the lilac horizon where sky and prairie met. 

“Human — an’ a prairie schooner — drawn 
by mules!” ventured Dixie again. “Some 
light sort o’ hunting wagon, I guess I” 

“And may-ay I be a double-jointed, knock- 
kneed hay-consumer I if I don’t know who it 
is.” Now it was the Rev hazarding a guess so 
smart that it swept the savannah like a hot 
simoon. “ Boys I Boys I it ’s the Sachem — 
bird-chief — warden-in-chief from Mosquito 
Inlet.” 

“But — but we left him behind, in sanc- 
tuary, Boob I How could he have got down 
here, ahead of us V' protested Drake. 

“Easily enough,” put in the Scoutmaster. 
“We’ve been all but three weeks out. By 
taking the train south; then using his mule- 

[214] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


drawn wagon against our foot-power, he could 
have made the trip in almost the same number 
of days.’* 

Tired foot-power it was now — but this dis- 
covery was refreshing as a wind-pulse. 

“But what d’ you suppose brings him down 
here panted Drake again. 

“The old story, I guess — ‘plumers’ — 
lawless feather-hunters!” Dean’s long neck 
was still rubbering towards the horizon. “ But 
— but he is n’t mingling with them as a tourist 
now, getting their confidence,” he added a few 
minutes later. “No-o, by gracious ! he ’s get- 
ting the confidence of a young sand-hill crane. 
Will you look there — the picture ?” 

It was a record picture : the man of iron 
whom, most of all, plume-hunters dreaded ; the 
young bird, rawly redheaded, craning its 
neck up from among the grasses, telling him 
things. 

“Wow I the wagon — light schooner — is 
the picture for me. Maybe — maybe he ’ll 
give us a lift by relays,” yearned the weary 
Rev. 

But before the scouts had talked more than 
a few minutes with the long-armed warden 


[215] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


and champion of bird-life, they were seized 
with the impression that schooner and hay- 
consumers were, like the “ top-shelfer’s rig, 
a blind. 

That Wulf would, by-and-bye, rid himself 
of both, somehow, and, master of wilderness 
and wood-craft, would slip around on foot, 
trailing the plume-hunters who would wipe 
out the rare bird-life of Florida, egged on by 
fashion, until not an aigrette remained. 

‘‘ In there — in there you may stumble upon 
me, camping without fire or light,’' he told the 
excited scouts, looking ahead towards the 
heart of the Big Cypress. ''Or, maybe, I '11 
be leaving my camp at midnight, stealing off 
into the swamp, because instinct tells me 
‘plumers’ are around — and there’s a right 
smart chance of their shooting it up, as they 
would a rookery in nesting time. You see 
some of them are desperadoes, hiding out for 
their health, as the crackers say, and guilty of 
far worse crimes than aigrette-hunting.” 

And then he began to question Dixie as to 
any lawless characters whom the guide might 
have seen around. 

‘‘Wall there were two fellers who stopped 
[216] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


at our shack fer dinner a few days ago/’ the 
gi.i-ie admitted. ‘‘One of ’em was a tall guy, 
straight ’s a string — looked as if he might 
once have been in the army.” 

Here the Wastrel trembled — trembled as 
if he saw another moccasin opening its baleful 
mouth upon him ; once more he saw Dyke 
sweating under the grape-vines because a 
parrot whistled “Over There.” 

“T’ other — ” began Dixie slowly. 

“Was — oh-h ! was he a — a reg’lar Jack- 
nasty-face, with — with a jaw that stuck 
out?” burst forth Neff impetuously — and 
then could have bitten his rash tongue out. 

“Wal ! you ’ve sketched him all right, kid,” 
Dixie drawled, startled. But — whe-ere — ” 

“I — I saw him on the train,” explained 
Neff to his brother scouts — and there swept 
across him in a whirl-blast a memory of how 
the two men had talked on that long, long 
night before he raced down the embankment 
after an orange-faced ibis, when they thought 
he was asleep, about pursuing some other 
“lay” besides a feather game down in the Big 
Cypress — of making it a grab game and 
“keeping the kid out.” 

[217] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Wulf was looking at him curiously — 
steadily. 

‘‘Some of these outlaws who Ve been hiding 
out here for years do occasionally get so sick 
o* the wilderness that they take chances on a 
blinker — a disguise — an' travel round a 
bit/' said the bird-chief. “ But — well ! that 's 
why you find me here, boys, holding a conver- 
sation with a young sand-hill crane," looking 
at the long-necked bird which, trumpeting 
shrilly, had sidled off into the prairie grass. 
“The game warden o' this region sent me a 
hurrygram," chucklingly, “saying that plume- 
hunters were busy down here, and as I thought 
it might be the same gang, or some of them, 
who had hung about the sanctuaries up north, 
I lit out to help him. Now — now ! it 's for 
getting r-right on to them, before they know 
I 'm here." Wulf's iron jaw was set. 

Again his keen glance swept the Wastrel, 
diving down under the boy's khaki collar, 
coming out at his toes — but while Neff 
was again calling himself a lost tenderfoot, 
facing cross-questioning, something — some- 
thing happened, lightning-like, out on the 
prairie. 


[218] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


“ There "s an alligator living in that black 
water-hole down there, on the edge of the 
willow-island — d 'you know it?" said Wulf 
suddenly ; and now his sharp glance shot past 
the tenderfoot — and rode the sharp back of a 
strolling pig. 

“Ye-es, we know it." Dixie nodded. “No 
twelve-inch 'barker/ I should say, but a 
twelve-foot bull, j edging by the marks in the 
mud. Poor ole 'gator ! His plated hide don't 
really belong to him now — I know some 
hunters who are coming out to get it. They 
ought to be along here pretty soon." 

“Well ! like other doomed ‘goners' I think 
he 'll get his choice in a good dinner before 
they get him. I have my eye on that razor- 
back — and so I guess has he ! " said Wulf. 

It all happened so quickly that the tender- 
foot felt as if his shivers were petrified into 
scars — scars which a thousand years hence 
could tell the prairie story. 

Something shot forth from the black mud of 
the savannah water-hole, something which, 
before the scouts' swimming gaze, had almost 
the bulk of a hippopotamus. 

Something in armor dark gray and black, 

I 219] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


with light blotches upon the sides faintly 
gleaming through a sheath of mud ! 

Something in clawing lizard shape, with a 
nose like the long dark snout of a racing motor- 
car ! Something that stretched itself out, 
ambushed, at the willow's edge, like a log ! 
The fairy chameleon of the swamp-edge in 
dark and hideous monster form ! 

“Ha! Big ole bull 'gator! 'Thought so!" 
rapped out Dixie. “An' full of mischief as a 
cameyflaged war-tank ! Though I can't see 
his spy-hole — that wicked little eye !" 

The boys were feeling breathlessly as if they 
could see it — read it ! That yellowish eye, 
burning sluggishly to a dull red coal, as they 
had seen it when camera-hunting with the 
searchlight. 

But then the alligator had been curiously 
intent on them — or on their light. Now it 
was intent on prey. 

They were in for a peep into the sealed, red 
book of the wilderness — the book of tooth 
and claw. 

For, all in a flash, the reptile's dark body, 
with its black cross-bands, bent like a bow, 
the tail sweeping round towards the head. 


[ 220 ] 


A RAZOR-BACK 


The ’gator lunged out sideways. It was at 
that moment that the piggy-wig, a medium- 
sized one — no sucking pig — strayed too 
near, grubbing for roots. 

Too late he saw his danger — knew the 
nature of that miry log. 

The war-tank spoke. With a grunt which 
opened the scent glands under the ’gator’s 
chin and sent forth a steamy jet, that powerful 
tail caught the pig in its smashing crescent — a 
blow that swept Mr. Piggy, madly squealing, off 
his feet, and at the same time broke his back. 

‘‘I guess one razor-back will be dead afore 
he knows it,” muttered Dixie grimly. 

‘‘Unlike the ’gator, himself, who never 
knows when he is dead,” breathed Wulf. 
“Heay-ens ! The drum — his crunching jaws.” 

It was a weird sound, that distant booming 
with which the jaws of the alligator came to- 
gether upon its prey. 

“ Wal ! I reckon that piggy feels as if he had 
been blown up by a shell ; he ’s traveling some 
— in fragments,” was Dixie’s grim comment 
again, as the big bull ’gator shook the prey so 
violently that it was dissected before the 
watchers’ eyes. 


[221 ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Then slowly — slowly — he sank with it 
over the wide edge of the water-hole. 

“He can break the bones under water, be- 
cause he has a dam in that main-sluice throat 
of his, a valve that he can open and shut at 
will, which won’t let a drop pass unless he 
wills it,'' said Wulf. “ But he has to come to the 
surface to swallow. Yum, yum ! What a pork 
dinner he 's having ! . . . But — I 'll be dod- 
fetched ! wha-at's that ? Never — never the 
sound of horses' feet, 'way off on the prairie ?" 

“Neither more nor less, by heck!" Dixie 
slapped his thigh. “The 'gator-hunters ! Now 

— now you 'll hear some cave-jumping, boys, 

— and the pig-killer will ‘get his'!" 


CHAPTER XIX 
The ’Gator Hunt 

A nd now for grunting down the 
‘gooser’!” 

It was Dol Cannon, a cowboy from 
a settlement further north, who gave vent to 
the explosion, at the alligator’s back door, 
just twenty minutes later. 

“He uses this water-hole for his ‘cave’ right 
along, all right,” Dol had said, being an old 
’gator hunter who could tell at a glance 
whether a swamp-hole was used as a spring 
dwelling, or not. 

“You see the cave is in the bottom of the 
hole, where the ’gator has hollowed out his 
mud-house — in which he is generally to be 
found, out ’mong the prairie pools, ’ this time 
o’ year,” Dixie explained to the scouts whom 
he was guiding. 


[223] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


‘‘Well, I ’ll be dod-fetched ! if this ’gator’s 
mud-home ain’t some dwelling; it has two 
rooms an’ a passage in it — a passage with a 
turn,” Cannon exclaimed, half wildly. “So 
much — so much I ’ve discovered, boys, with 
the ‘ready rouster.’” 

He looked at the muddy twenty-foot pole 
in his hand, at the end of which was a strong 
steel hook. With this, driving it down through 
the black mud, he had felt for the mouth of the 
cave — standing knee-deep in mud, himself, 
at the edge of the gurgling water-hole. 

“Gosh! This grows ex-ci-ting.” Drake 
gurgled deeply, like the sputtering hole. 

“I ’ll say so ! Ex-cite-ment enough to keep 
us busy — this — trip 1 ” His companions 
were equally wrought-up, following the move- 
ments of that probing, ready rouster. 

“I guess ’t will be a ready rouser to the alli- 
gator, all right — if once he gets that steel 
hook in him,” panted the Rev. “Well! justice 
is sure’ no lunk-head, this time.” 

“Never much of a lunk-head, I guess,” said 
Wulf, thinking of the judgment he hoped to 
mete out to “plumers.” 

But now Cannon, having located the alli- 

[ 224 ] 


THE ’GATOR HUNT 


gator’s front door and discovered that the 
cave seemed to be divided into two compart- 
ments, with a passage or sharp angle between 
them, stepped back on the surrounding marsh 
a little way and began probing the mud, there, 
in an effort to discover the cave’s rear end, to 
get behind the pig-stealer and drive him out. 

‘‘He don’t use the twenty-foot ‘rouster’ 
now ; he uses a gooser — an’ with that he ’s 
going to put a goose-cap on the ’gator,” Dixie 
remarked. “A r-right smart ‘limb’ that 
gooser is, too, boys ! ” 

A clever implement, indeed, it was : a metal 
rod about an inch in diameter and some eight 
feet long, with a four-inch iron spike at the 
end of it — and just above the spike a solid 
ring, two inches in diameter, around the rod. 

Pressing this ring down through the mud, 
Dol probed with it until, suddenly, he felt it 
swing clear in the hollow of the cave beneath, 
just back of where he believed the alligator 
to be. 

“And now for grunting down the gooser!” 
he said then. 

The schoolboys held their breaths while the 
wilderness hunter, quite as proficient in ’gator 

[225] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


‘Tingo’' as the woodland parrot was in the 
human tongue, grunted — full-mouthed — 
against the side of the gooser. 

‘‘Wha-what 's the big idea?” gasped the 
Rev thickly. 

‘‘Well! that rod is a sort o' magic rod. The 
metal ring around it, pressed down into the 
cave lends a kind o' ventriloquism to the grunt 
that makes it seem to come, not only from be- 
hind the alligator, but from beneath him, too,'' 
Wulf explained. 

“Gee I yes, so that he thinks there 's another 
big alligator grunting behind him, on for fight 
maybe — and so he puts for the mouth of the 
cave. I see!” panted Drake fierily. “Get- — 
get a little nearer. Wastrel, so that you may 
see how the blooming thing works!” he said. 

But the Wastrel had now in full bloom a fear 
of Wulf in his breast — remembering those 
booty boxes he had mailed — he hung upon 
the outskirts of the fearfully eager group — 
timorously upon the skirts of the mud-crunch- 
ing outfit. 

“ Whe-ew ! This is the gr-reatest goose game 
I ever saw,” bristled Dean. 

“The game does n't seem to work, however 


[226] 


THE ’GATOR HUNT 


— for some reason or other,” put in the equally 
excited Scoutmaster. 

For some reason it didn't. The alligator 
was insensible to the gooser grunts. He did 
not “put for” the mouth of the cave. 

Guess he 's ‘logy’ from eating too much 
pork. I ’ve located him, anyhow,” said Can- 
non. “Now for trying to yank him out 
through his front door. This is the second pig 
he ’s killed on us. Come ’long, Bill ! Take 
hold as if ev’ry finger was a ’gator hook!” he 
said to his fellow-hunter who had ridden out 
with him. 

The dogs followed excitedly from rear-end 
to front, too. There were four of them, bird- 
dogs and “slow trailers,” or deer trackers. 
They were of no earthly use in the present 
subterranean hunt, as the hunter explained, but 
they had followed along just to see the sport. 

Cruel sport it seemed, — for man is more 
clumsy and more brutal in his hunting than 
his wild brother — as Dol again made use of 
the twenty-foot rouster, runn’ng that imple- 
ment up through the mouth of the cave, until 
its powerful iron hook caught in a vulnerable 
part of the pig-killer. 

[227] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Thus hooked — both hunters taking hold 
together, they tried to pull h.m out. 

It was the strangest experience for school- 
boys — even adventurous seniors, advanced 
in their teens. The swishing of the rouster- 
pole in subterranean mud ! The frightened 
gurgle of dark water, now blacker in the face 
than before, as the grappling pole thrashed 
around in it. 

And down there — deep down in his strong- 
hold out of sight, the great reptile, the great 
saurian, the mighty alligator holding the fort, 
setting his bristling }aws — his innumerable 
teeth — on the determination: ‘‘They shall 
not get me !” 

“Gee! Wouldn't this be ‘some' yarn for 
the Adventurers' Cup — if properly told," 
breathed the Rev. 

“No telling the ending — yet!" came from 
Drake. “ I bet my head they 'll never get 
him !" 

“A fiery wager — but you 'll lose !" So the 
Scoutmaster took him up. “Ha! They're 
going to try the gooser stunt — goose-cap 
stunt — again." 

And this time the goose-cap was fitted upon 
[228] 


THE ’GATOR HUNT 


the ’gator’s head. He was fooled by the 
grunting down the gooser-rod. 

“He has been hurt by the hook,” said 
Dixie. “An’ now he th nks that it’s another 
bull-alligator, behind him, who has bitten 
him, so — so he ’s rolling over an’ bellowing 
there below. Hear-rhm?” 

It is the invisible part of the life and death 
drama on any stage that thrills an audience 
to its boots. 

Such thrills the scouts felt now until the mud 
became as red-hot pitch beneath their feet in 
their burning excitement over the struggle, 
tarred by the sympathy they could not help 
feeling for the great brute beneath them — 
the iron reptile — so indomitable, yet whose 
strength n the long run would be but as a 
dummy against man and his cunning. 

“You see, the bulls do at this season of the 
year have big fights between themselves, and 
this one does n’t feel like turning and fighting 
now — fighting the bunko ’gator behind him 
— or maybe he ’s caught where he can’t turn,” 
Dixie snorted. “So, as he rolls, he ’s working 
nearer to the mouth of the cave — and there 
the hunters will get him.” 

[229I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


And the hunters did. Again the iron hook 
found the vulnerable place in his dark armor, 
with Dol and his companion pulling upon the 
pole together, the guide help ng, the ready 
rouster did its work upon the pig-killer. 

The alligator — fighting to the last — was 
hauled out, lashing right and left with his 
battle-axe of a tail, and the swift mercy of a 
bullet from the Scoutmaster’s rifle, between 
the little dull coals of eyes, ended the hunt. 

“Ba-ack! Keep back — boys! That tail 
of his is no knuckle-duster I ” cried Wulf. 
“And what did I tell you about a ’gator’s 
never knowing when he 's dead ? This one 
has a bullet through the brain ; and yet he 
could deal you a blow with that cudgel of a 
tail that might break your back as it did the 
nigs’.” 

“He ’s a big ‘un,’” said the Rev. “ ’ Must 
measure about fourteen feet. What are they 
going to do with him now ?” 

“Roger and skin him,” said Dixie, “run a 
fine stick down his spinal column, to sort o’ 
prove to him that he 's dead — while they 
take the hide.” 

“Well I I guess we won’t wait to view that 
[ 230] 


THE ’GATOR HUNT 


process — as we Ve in high gear for the Big 
Cypress/* decided the Scoutmaster, ‘‘So 
*gator-hunters ! So long, Wulf ! Maybe 
we *11 meet again — somewhere in there ! ** 
pointing ahead towards the horizon. 

“If you find our bones, raise a monument 
to us,** said Drake. “Humph! You look as 
if you had a bone to pick with somebody. 
What ’re you so glum about, Wastrel?** he 
asked, a little later, as the adventurers forged 
on their way over the great savannah, amid 
mud-holes and dark, watery sloughs, where 
there was no trail but the occasional narrow, 
winding one of an alligator, such as cattle 
would make in a damp pasture. 

The tenderfoot looked dejectedly before him. 

“He acts as if he had ‘butter on his head* 
— something melting on his conscience,** 
commented Drake silently, as he had remarked 
before on the day when the waif, wrought up 
by the taunts of Brownie, transfigured by 
anger like the little chameleon, had given a 
nature talk which won him that “perfect** 
dot in the centre of the page — and had be- 
haved so unaccountably afterwards. 

Yet, as more swamps were struck and “hard 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


going/’ the big scout’s arm, and his back, too, 
were ever at hand to help the weaker boy. 

“There ’s big work to do. And that ’s why 
you ’re here ! ” said his adventurer’s soul to 
him. “Life and you are hand in hand — you 
with your scout’s observation, scout’s training 
— to bring some fine thing about.” 

There were moments, swampy moments, 
when he carried the Wastrel on his sweating 
shoulders, above snakes, when the Soul of all 
Life seemed whispering to him — the Father 
he had found — saying : “ Carry on ! ” 

That whisper was in the Wastrel’s soul too. . 
It melted the butter on his conscience. 

Before nightfall he was telling all about 
those “feather” boxes to Drake, of his mailing 
a consignment twice, of his interview with his 
former pal. Dyke, by the school hammock — 
of how the woodland Jokie had butted in with 
scaring “ chin-chatter. ’ ’ 

That was a grueling moment for the red- 
haired scout. 

“Gee! And after my sweating to get you 
here 1 ” he ground out. 

Seizing the younger boy by the shoulders 
amid wild under-brush, he backed him up 

[232] 


THE ’GATOR HUNT 


against a big pine and shook him — until he 
fairly shook the kernel of the secret out of him, 
like seed out of a sack, of how, in the long 
run, he had hurled his defiance at the wood- 
pile. 

“Well -11 ! good enough.'* The older scout's 
arm dropped to the tenderfoot's shoulders. 
“So you were ‘white,' at last! Gee! if you 
had gone on selling the school, I 'd have felt 
like ditching you here. I guess the Scout- 
master is right ; there is game blood in you. 
But — whose — blood — " 

“Carry — on !“ said the voice within. 

“ But Dyke — he 'll kidnap me-e — do-o 
something to me, if — if he runs across me out 
here," shivered the fourteen-year-old. 

“Listen!" said Drake. He'll kidnap me 
first ; I promise you that ! And I guess my 
buddy would have something to say on the 
subject." He swung his rifle. 


[233] 


CHAPTER XX 

Indian Potato Slough 

T he Okoloacoochee, at last! Indian 
Potato Slough, at last! And stone 
dry in places! But — it sure must 
have been the rainy season when it was 
named.” 

It was Dean who made the remark, with 
lips dryly puckered, as he had made it, long 
ago, upon the railroad embankment — when 
this expedition was only a dream. “0-kol-o- 
a-coochee ! Gee ! No drought in letters when 
they named it,” he hooted, “those dusky 
Seminoles 1 ” 

“The trail to the Seminole Indian reserva- 
tion crosses the Okoloacoochee just a little 
way north of here,” said the guide. “Gen- 
erally you ’ll run across some red-shirted Tiger 
Tail, in deer-skin leggings, or strapping Brown 

[234] 


INDIAN POTATO SLOUGH 


Tiger, hunting otter round here at this time 
o’ year — they come up to the Big Cypress to 
get logs for their dug-outs, too — cypress 
canoes. ” 

‘‘Ha !” The explosion came from Drake. 
Deep in the breast of the silent Seminole was 
a secret he burned to wring from him. 

The Indian, alone, following the otter’s 
trail, knew the still more shadowy trail of a 
Wild Man, which led in — in among the 
snake-ridden “strands” of the Big Cypress 
Swamp on the other side of the dark slough, 
or half-dry water-way, by which he stood now. 

The Indian knew — and he was n’t telling. 

“Well ! they can’t pole their dug-out canoes, 
hollowed out of one huge cypress-log — down 
this channel now,” said the Scoutmaster. 
“The drainage canals, which were good to us, 
getting here, have sucked the water from this 
Indian Potato Slough once a flourishing 
water-way running down through the Big 
Cypress and westward to the Gulf. And, 
Jove ! I ’d hate the task of shoving a canoe 
over the dry spots.” 

He shivered a little, the six-footer who had 
not blenched before submarine shells, at the 


[235] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


sight of snake-land, stubby-tailed moccasins 
by the dozen hanging upon the bare gray 
knees, or buttressing roots of the cypress 
trees ^ — with radiant morning-glory and pearly 
mistletoe. 

‘‘But it 's a wonderful wilderness, fellows 
— and we Ve gone all lengths to get here, 
have n’t we ? The birds ! Will you look at 
those old wood ibises, the flint-heads, soaring 
a thousand feet above us — there is no other 
bird that can fly so high. Or standing in a row 
and looking at us — with their har-rd old 
heads !” 

“They ’re sizing the adventurers up,” 
laughed the Rev. “They look like a row of 
solemn old deacons, with their bald heads 
shining like flint, against the white of their 
plumage ; bigger than wild geese, too ! ” 

“And, gobble, gobble! There goes a wild 
turkey, gobbling in that hammock,” came 
from Drake. “Dixie is going to roost him 
by-an’-bye, find his whereabouts by hooting 
like an owl — steal upon him, after dusk.” 

“But the owls I The funny — funny little 
digging owls! Oh! will you look at them!” 
cried the Wastrel. 


INDIAN POTATO SLOUGH 


All his heart was in the cry — such as was 
not bound up in the flowers — the rare, 
strange orchids clinging to the motherly knees 
of the lesser cypresses near the slough, which 
dangled beauty and the beast together. 

‘'Yes, the little burrowing owls, prairie 
owls — standing bolt upright, each pair, on 
a little mound of sand at the mouth of a bur- 
row an’ curtseying to us, if you please ! 
Curtseying gravely to us, as strangers ! Well, 
if that isn’t the ‘beat ’em’!” Drake’s red 
eyelashes twinkled through the swamp-mud 
that caked them, as he returned the little 
owls’ bowing call. 

“But, boys, there’s the beat-all!” The 
Scoutmaster’s voice had a victor’s ring. 
“We ’re in the land of the giants, fellows ! By 
our own foot-power we’ ve won our way to it, 
through hardship and toil ! Giants ! Look 
at those cypresses, there, to the south of us, 
on the other side of the ford — eighty-five 
feet, I should say, to the first feathery limb — 
and each trunk seven to nine feet in diameter. 
The kingdom of the giants — where never 
the foot of Boy Scout has trod before ! Let 
us take possession of it in the name of the Boy 

[ 237 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


Scouts of America ! In the spirit of Columbus, 
saintly discoverer, let us do it reverently!’' 

There was a momentary bowed pause, each 
rough head bare in silent worship — as the 
Scoutmaster’s broken word or two of prayer 
dedicated the hard-won continent. 

“The Wastrel and I are going to investi- 
gate the homes of the burrowing owls, out on 
the prairie, and take lessons in stuttering/’ 
said Drake, a little later. “Listen to their 
funny call : Whit, whit ! followed by a stutter : 
Who-who-who-who-whit-t ! We ’ll all be starn- 
mering before we get through, I guess.” 

“I ’ll go along, too,” said the Rev. “I 'd 
like to block up one of their burrows — and 
see what they ’d do.” 

“No you don’t — you old bull-hazer,” 
laughed the red-haired Assistant Scoutmaster. 
“But we may dig out one — and see what the 
tunnel is like.” 

A well-excavated tunnel they found it to be, 
level near the entrance to the little sandy dug- 
out and then running down-grade to the longer, 
broader burrow with the oval nest-chambers, 
lined with weeds and grasses, with the glassy 
white eggs laid out in a horse-shoe. 


[238 ] 


INDIAN POTATO SLOUGH 


*‘We *11 crib just one egg for Deanie*s col- 
lection — and leave the little stutterers to 
repair their dug-out — as I guess they will,** 
said Drake, scout officer. “ It *s some dug-out, 
too, for a little nine-inch owl, extends five feet, 
or so, I guess — and must be a foot below the 
surface of the prairie.** 

“But here — just here where the nest is — 
look — there *s a little rise, as if — as if — ** 
“To keep the nest above any water that 
might gather in the tunnel ! That *s so. Was- 
trel ! ** Drake whistled, as he answered the 
tenderfoot. “He *s always getting on to 
something that the rest of us overlook — 
might overlook.’* His eyes narrowed. “Well! 
as I brought the shot-gun along, how about 
putting for that little pine-hammock ahead, 
now — softly as possible — on the str-rict 
q . . . t — still-hunting an old gobbler ? We 
need some turkey-meat.** 

“Dixie is going to hoot through a ‘yelper,’ 
hollow wing-bone of a turk*, at dusk, and get 
one,** put forth Sharron. 

“I *d like to get ahead of Dixie.** 

But the wild turkey’s ears are sharp. The 
stalkers reached the hammock, only to find a 


[239I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

fine old turk’ running like a deer for a neigh- 
boring swamp, disdaining to take to his wings. 

Gee ! would n t he make the school record 
in the four-forty.?” laughed Drake. “The 
quarter-mile run ! Here — goes ! ” 

He fired but missed the gobbler, which 
sent back a series of derisive gobbles, as if to 
outdo the shot-gun. 

I m for pursuing him to the swamp, 
though I ’m only half sorry I missed him ; he ’s 
such a champ. The youthful sportsman 
laughed again. I d hardly get him, any way, 
if I dropped him here — I ’d have to comb 
the underbrush. But — but what ’s that ? 
Have n t heard such a squawking of young 
ones — nursery Babel, by gracious! not — 
not since we were on Pelican Island.” 

“Comes from the north of the cypress 
swamp ! Another little swamp ! Let ’s in- 
vestigate I ” said the Rev. 

They did — foregoing the fleet gobbler — 
to find the body of another bird, barring a 
blood-stained threshold — a broken lily. 

My s-soul ! It s an egret — snowy egret 
— with the aigrette-plumes gone. And — and 
here’s another — a larger egret — the ‘long 


INDIAN POTATO SLOUGH 


white’ — down — down among the vines — 
all mutilated !” bleated the Rev. 

“For heaven’s sake! Plume-hunters must 
have been at work here.” Drake tightly 
grasped his shot-gun. 

“Oh-h! come away — away.” The Was- 
trel’s face was white. 

The leader stood irresolute. For the first 
time upon this great adventure he needed a 
“foot-warmer.” His feet were cold — cold 
and leaden. His knees shivered. 

From the rifled rookery came a wail, rising 
weirdly above the croaking and twittering of 
hungry nestlings. 

Oo — o-ee-ee 1 0-o-ee-ee-ee I ’ ’ 

It began as if trying to be a war whoop — 
and ended in the most plaintive, desolate 
moaning. 

''Ow-ow-ee-eeel” There followed a wild 
and choking gurgle — a long-drawn sob. 


[241 ] 


CHAPTER XXI 


W' 


Little Tiger 

THY-Y ! it 's an Indian boy!'' 

Gun in hand — but wishing for 
his rifle — Drake, the adventurer, 
had gone forward — his companions behind 
him, the Wastrel trembling in a cold funk. 

“That cry came from somebody who 's hurt 
— hurt badly. Even if it should be one of 
the ‘plumers’who shot himself accidentally, 
we 'd have to do something. Could n't go 
away an' leave him — to — die!" the leader 
had said. 

But the figure which looked desolately — 
despairingly — up at them from a rank tangle 
of palmetto-scrub and ferns upon the swamp- 
edge, was that of no lawless feather-hunter. 

It was the squatting, hopeless figure of a 
twelve-year-old boy. 


LITTLE TIGER 


His skin was bright copper-color ; pale now, 
and pain-swept, it had almost the luster of 
a new cent. 

The coarse red shirt which hung loosely to 
his knees was bound about his waist with a 
bright girdle. 

His ‘‘dandy” deer-skin leggings were 
adorned with finely cut thongs of the soft 
skin which hung from his waist to the slight, 
boyish ankle where they met the moccasin. 

Evidently those leggings were the loving 
work of some mother-squaw’s hand. They 
were enough to make a scout’s mouth water. 

But between legging and beaded moccasin 
there was a glimpse of bare, dusky skin. On 
that the boy’s eyes were fixed very hopelessly. 

Once he raised them and looked at the 
mutilated body of a mother-egret, reft of its 
bridal-plumes — dying at his feet. 

Above his head among the aerial roots of a 
red mangrove-tree, famished nestlings twit- 
tered and croaked. 

The boy was crooning something to the dy- 
ing bird : it might only be a repetition of the 
“ Ow-ow-ow-ee-ee ! ” that had a note in it like 
a death-whoop. 


[243] 


drake and the ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

But as his despairing ear caught the sound 
of footsteps swishing in nearby mud, the young 
face became instantly set and stolid. The 
slight figure stiffened from the waist up. The 
“soldier was on parade.’’ 

“Hullo!’’ said Drake. “Hullo! Scoutee, 
what ’s the ‘mess’ — what ’s the tr-rouble ?” 

The Indian boy raised his eyes, small, dark, 
piercing. The very first thing they lit upon 
said : “Hope !’’ 

It was the unmitigated flame of a red head. 
Rufous and untrimmed it burned like a lamp 
above him. 

"Toke-is-kee-tus-chee!” he muttered invol- 
untarily — that Indian boy; his lips faintly 
twitching. 

“Sky-rockets ! What ’s all that — about ? 
Dog Latin for Redhead, eh ? To^^-twisters. 

. . . Heaven’s! It ’s snake — bite!” 

The fiery eyelashes flaming above a pepper- 
and-salt glance dropped suddenly to the red 
mark on an exposed ankle — the mark of a 
moccasin’s fangs. 

And with that, for a moment, the twelve- 
year-old brave lost his calm. 

“Ow-ow-ee ...” His lips half-framed the 


LITTLE TIGER 


howl. ‘‘Snakee bite — too much bite! In- 
dian have good medicine for — for bite. 
Br-rown Tiger he have good medicine, for 
b-bite. Heap good medicine! Litt’ Tiger 
he no ha-ave good medicine. I ’ll t’ink 
Litt’ Tiger go on Big Sleep prett’ soon — 
um !” 

And again he looked at the dying egret. 

But before that look the scout had waked 
up — was all alive. 

The orange fire-ball head — the Toke-tW\s- 
ter — was within a foot of the small, dark one, 
now. The white brother, with lighti ing fin- 
gers, was unrolling his first-aid kit. Drake was 
examining the wound. 

“I haven’t had much experience with 
snake-bites ; luckily we ’ve all escaped,” he 
brea hed aside to the Rev, ‘‘except that slight 
nip Dixie got, crossing Wildcat Swamp. 
He — he may n’t have a chance,” glancing at 
the boy, whose color had faded now to dull 
brass. “Poison may be all through his 
system already — but, by gr-racious ! we ’ll 
fight.” 

And fight they did, the white brothers. 

The Rev slit the beautiful thonged legging, 


[245] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


getting his plump fingers dangerously near the 
oozing wound. 

Drake had his knife out. 

‘‘Little Tiger heap brave Indian,” he said. 
“Little Tiger laugh — laugh at hurt — when 
knife hurt him.” 

Already he had wound a bandage tightly 
around the leg, to shut off further venom from 
the heart. 

Little Tiger looked down at the bared brown 
limb. Here and there it bore what might be 
called the tickle of a knife-thrust, the mark of 
initiation — initiation into active boyhood — 
the hall-mark of a chiefs son. 

“Litt' Tiger pass in-shus^' he boasted 
proudly — then carved for himself a wooden 
face while the busy scout-knife enlarged the 
edges of the wound, to make it bleed freely, 
the amateur surgeon then applying a solution 
to it, permanganate of potash. 

“Lucky — lucky we are that the Scout- 
master made us mix up some of this, fresh, 
from the crystals only to-day !” he said, fitting 
a hyperdermic syringe together, and injecting 
some into the slight, brown leg. 

“ White man have heap good medicine, too ! ” 

[246 ] 


LITTLE TIGER 


He shook the rampant red head at the squat- 
ting boy — it seemed to mesmerize him — 
that “ To/^d'-twister.'' “Little Tiger fall on 
Big Sleep — die? Not much!'' he flouted. 
“Little Tiger get well — heap soon — show 
white brother how to hunt the otter. But how 
— how comes Little Tiger here?" he asked, 
with a sudden glance at other dead birds lying 
around, a “Pink" among them, a roseate 
spoonbill, their old friend of the Inlet — with 
the peach-blossom wings torn away. 

Evidently it was a small rookery of nesting 
birds, among the thick mangrove bushes and 
cypresses, which had been shot over. 

“White man kill um, kill all, kill many." 
Little Tiger's face worked. Let litt’ pick'- 
ninny bird die. Indian boy give water to 
pick'ninny bird an' — an' litt' fish." 

The victim glanced at a rudely carved cy- 
press bowl not far from him in which there 
was still a minnow or two. 

“Little Tiger feed starving nestlings I Whe- 
ew 1 Bul-ly 1 Little Tiger heap fine Boy 
Scout!" proclaimed the red-haired snake- 
doctor. 

“Indian boy, tell white man : ' Hal-wuk' — it 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


is bad — big Gov’ment man he get him — put 
him in — in iron hoose ; den — den he kill po" 
long white no mo\ 

The snake-bitten one was panting feverishly, 
excitedly now, looking at the body of a larger 
white bird, an American egret, with its shiny 
black feet and legs stiffening in death ; it was 
head-down among the bushes — robbed of its 
milky back-plumes. 

“Rah! Rah I Bully for Indian boy!’' 
whooped the amateur surgeon again — while 
the Wastrel now stole a little nearer, seeing a 
vision of the white man who might have been 
bearded by Little Tiger. 

“I guess I '11 loosen that bandage a little 
now an’ let the poison work through slowly — 
slowly into the system.” Drake was suiting 
the action to the word. 

“How about carrying him into camp then ?” 
said the Rev. “The Scoutmaster has more 
medical supplies — he might fix him up.” 

But when this plan was proposed to Little 
Tiger his drawn face flamed, like a dull brass 
lamp. 

“No — go-o!” he breathed fearfully. 
“Medicine — mo’ medicine — no want ’em ! 


[248] 


LITTLE TIGER 


White man — ole white man — no good — 
holo-na-gus — heap lie! White man — ” 

“White men have taken the Seminoles' lands 
from them/' said the Rev. 

And then that which was hidden in the bull- 
hazer — a self which only his two chums knew 
— came to light. 

“Boy Scout no lie!" he said. “Boy Scout 
has made vow — vow to the Great Spirit. 
Listen, Little Tiger!" 

It was a moment when the blind was lifted 
from a boy's soul. 

Setting his back against a tree, his right 
hand uplifted, his p ump face stained with 
mud and hardship, the Rev repeated the Boy 
Scout oath to Little Tiger : 

*‘On my honor I will do my best, To do my duty to 
God and my country, and to obey the scout law; to 
help other people at all times — 

“Help oder peop' heap — um!" Little 
Tiger glanced down at his syringed leg. 

“To keep myself — to keep myself heap strong, heap 
smart, heap true ! ” 

thus the paraphrasing voice took up the oath 
again. “And now — now — will Little Tiger 
come with the white brothers ?" 


[ 249 ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

The Rev had a magnetism of his own that 
could creep through a crack, as his com- 
panions said. 

But it was nothing to the mesmerism of that 
fiery redhead. For Little Tiger had never seen 
one like it before. 

Toke-is-kee-tee ... he began. 

“Heavens! he isn’t getting off that Toke 
chin-chatter on me again; is he?” gasped 
Drake. 

But now the deep chuckle in his throat found 
a hollow echo in Little Tiger’s. 

And with that laugh, that faint laugh up a 
red shirt-sleeve, the “pickaninnies’” cham- 
pion capitulated. 


[ 250 1 


CHAPTER XXII 
A Slim-Witch 

D id Little Tiger ev-er see a white 
man who is loco — heap loco/' Drake 
touched his forehead, ‘‘who has his 
lair, his wigwam — palmetto wigwam — deep 
in the heart of the Big Cypress, with lo- 
co-see^ the bear, and o-shen-aw^ the otter, to 
whom the Indians — are — kind 

The speaker dipped his toes into the stream, 
at a point where Indian Potato Slough held 
still some water — where irritable moccasins 
were not in evidence — and looked at the 
Seminole boy, with a fire in his eyes, the fever 
of a trail that was a mere shadow-path, which 
in his heart he had been following for months. 

“Ugh ! White man — white man who come 
to camp of Indian many — many — moons 
ago — um — w’en me littly pick'ninny pa- 
poose — white man heap loco?" 


[ 251 ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

“Yes! White man — Wild Man — crazy 
as the deuce ! Won’t look at his own kind 
Drake s toes fairly smoked, stirring up 
the temperature of the already hot slough 
around him. 

But does n t he come to Indian settlement 

— Indian Reservation — now.?” he went on 
after a moment. Does n’t Josie Billie, big 
chief and Brown Tiger, who is as the wind 
in the trees when he hunts, bring him stuff, 
grub, shirt, moccasin from the trading store 

— ammunition, too, I guess !” 

He glanced at the stately figure of a six-foot 
Seminole, leaning against a tree-trunk by the 
slough. There was enough likeness in his 
coppery features under the gaudy turban 
wound around his head to those of the boy 
upon the bank to mark him out as Brown 
Tiger, father of Little Tiger — the otter- 
hunter who had good medicine for snake-bite. 

Brown Tiger who — Drake tingled all over 
at the thought — had once wrested a rifle from 
a white man’s guide, crazy with fire-water — 
and stopped his running amuck ! 

Dixie, who knew him, had found and 
brought him to the camp where his twelve- 


A SLIM-WITCH 


year-old son was recovering from the effects of 
his bite — and with him wise old Josie Billie, 
Seminole big chief, for they were hunting 
together. 

There they were receiving Boy Scout hospi- 
tality and telling in return many secrets of the 
hunt, of bear and otter and littly panther cub 
that play all the time, play ojus^ but the heart 
of the most fiery adventurer in that camp — 
now kicking up a water-smoke — was intent 
upon one hunt above all. And that — and 
that a man-hunt ! 

‘‘And doesn’t he leave money in queer 
places to pay the Indian for the stuff he brings, 
because — because he has money with him, the 
Wild Man to whom the Indian has given a 
name like, gee ! like the sprained one you 
fastened upon me, because — because he 
knows so-o much — heap much about birds 
and flowers — um, yes ! an’ snakes too. 
So m-much that what he does nt know 
w- would n’t be enough to swear by!” The 
school boy ’s toes were kicking up a wild 
water smoke, now. 

“Know bird nest, too, him — heap big bird 
nest — ojusT' muttered Little Tiger artlessly, 

[253] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

dipping his brown toes, too, in the water, 
kicking up eloquent drops that, together with 
his ingenuous words, answered — answered 
all the bunched questions, without his know- 
ing it. 

Drake ceased splashing — and looked at 
him. Looked him all over like a shark, the 
hungriest shark who would devour him bodily, 
leggings and all, to get at the pearl of knowl- 
edge he possessed ! 

But he proceeded warily. 

“Ha ! Maybe he show Little Tiger crane’s 
nest — um — this white man who is loco — 
‘ too much crazy in the head,’ eh ? Maybe he 
show him gr-reat nest — big as an island — of 
whooping crane on jug, black jug that has no 
bottom, in white man’s lingo, bonnet lake — 
lake all bonneted with water-lilies — um ?’’ 

Little Tiger was admiring those bright new 
coppers, his toes, in the water. 

“Um. How-w!’’ He nodded stolidly. 
" Pon-son-gay! Yes-tiddy.” 

“Yesterday!” Drake leaped to his feet 
upon the slough-bank. Wildly he ran his 
quivering fingers up through his hair, until it 
rose — a flaming ridge. 

1254] 


A SLIM-WITCH 


Thunder was in his ears. Lightinng spun 
about him. 

It was as if some spectre, dim spectre, 
which he had been following at a distance for 
months, had risen right up from the slough 
and struck him. 

‘‘Yesterday! Ye gods!'’ he ejaculated. 
Yesterday! Then — then he must be near 
here !" 

With a whoop he flung his arms about the 
Indian boy who, realizing too late that he had 
spilt the milk, spilt a secret, slipped to his feet 
elastically, too. 

“Oh-h! Little Tiger-r," he cried, “I Ve 
got an idea. Perfect ‘Jake’ of an idea!” 
deliriously. “You — you’ll show me where 
to find him, Little Tiger ! You ’ll show the 
white scout who doctored the snake-bite ! 
You-ou — ” 

“Don’ know!” The little Seminole’s 
dusky lips twitched. “White man he no 
want ’em — no see ’em — um.” 

It was at this moment that Drake rose to 
tiptoe on the bank. He clutched his flaming 
ridge. 

Something — something was going on under 

[255I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

his eyes that turned him creepy to his curling 
toes, just as did the knowledge that the Wild 
Man who had been in his thoughts for months 
was near — in ambush on the other side of the 
ford, maybe. 

Had he a power to shed magic around him, 
that Wild Man — mad Nature wiz^ — magic 
in wide circles ? 

Near — near to the two boys upon the bank 
had lain the wings of an old turkey gobbler 
which Dixie, hooting like a barred owl to 
locate the turk^ that indignantly answered, 
had ‘‘roosted’' or shot down from the top of a 
seventy-five foot pine-tree the night before. 

Suddenly one of those chestnut-tipped, 
speckled wings stood up on end of its own 
accord and, without any visible support or 
propulsion, started to cross the stream. 

To say that the hair stood on end on the 
heads of the two boys, watching — redskin 
and white — is to say little. It bristled all 
over their bodies. 

“What — w-what the dickens has got into 
the thing?” Drake 's whisper held a creepy 
thrill. “Is it possessed, a — a ‘slim-witch’ ? 
L-look, Wastrel!” He clutched at the light- 

[256] 


A SLIM-WITCH 


haired tenderfoot who happened to be passing. 

As that tenderfoot, for the first time, took 
up a position quite close to the Indian boy, at 
a weirdly wide-awake moment, the latter 
started and gasped as if he saw another ‘‘slim- 
witch'' — some further ghostly happening. 

On sailed the chestnut wing — bolt upright 
— a phantom craft ! 

On across the miry slough, heading steadily 
for the opposite bank ! 

“Well-11, if that isn't the spookiest thing!" 
Drakes whisper was quite parched now ; 
incredulously he rubbed his eyes. 

What would happen when that opposite 
shore was reached ? 

Would the bewitched turkey-wing melt 
into thin air then — or soar aloft, a ghostly 
pinion ? 

It was the weirdest performance, for the 
bright edge of evening. 

The watchers felt bewitched themselves, 
mesmerized out of their senses, as at last the 
sunset shore was made. 

Mysteriously the wing began to climb the 
bank — towards the misty shadows. 

But it was at that moment that Drake 


[257I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


suddenly jumped into the air — high into the 
air as if he would shed his skin. 

'‘Bah! S-snake!'* he hissed. “Snake! 
Moccasin ! I see him now ! He must — must 
have swum up very quietly near to us, smelling 
the meat at the end of the wing-bone, grabbed 
it and started ’cross stream.” 

“Bad snakee, he swim under-r water — ” 
shook out Little Tiger. 

“All-11 but his head which was holding the 
wing up and that was hidden among the 
feathers!” panted the red-haired paleface 
scout. 

Excited — excited beyond measure, he 
reached out for his “buddy,” his rifle, leaning 
against a tree, leveled it, took steady aim> 
knocked both snake and prize over together. 

“Huh ! I wish, now, I ’d waited to see 
what he ’d do with the wing,” he hooted, a 
moment later. “But — but I handed him 
that in payment for what another moccasin 
did to you. Little Tiger. . . . And now — 
and now,” striking while the iron was hot, 
still hot with mystery — “how — how about 
that Big Idea ? To-morrow — to-morrow 
morning, ear-rly — Little Tiger, you’ll show 

[258] 


A SLIM-WITCH 


me, Toke-is-kee^ the Redhead, and — and this 
boy,** wildly pushing the Wastrel forward, 
“the way to the shack of the man, white man, 
who is loco, crazy — crazy like the wing, eh ?** 
Little Tiger’s mouth still hung open. His 
eyes were turned upon NeflF with a glaring, 
ghost-ridden look. 

“If — if Brown Tiger say-ay it is good,** 
he answered doubtfully. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
The Chiefs 

D rake the adventurer came into the 
presence of Brown Tiger, hunting 
chief, and of Josie Billie, Seminole big 
chief, and saluted. 

The turbaned chieftains were seated now 
outside the palmetto shack, a square shelter 
supported by four poles and thatched with 
waterproof palmetto fans which Dixie had 
erected for the scouts whom he was guiding. 

“Will Josie Billie, chief of all the Seminoles, 
and Brown Tiger, who hunts like the wind, 
give permission for Little Tiger to show me, 
the white brother, the way to the camp of that 
white man who is loco, but who knows so much 
about the wood and the swamp — and every- 
thing in them?” he asked. 

There was somber silence for a minute. 


[a6o] 


THE CHIEFS 


“Who tell you 'bout man who's loco — 
crazy on de head?" spoke up Brown Tiger 
then ; he frequented the trading store with his 
otter and alligator skins — and spoke fairly 
good English. 

He lowered his long pipe. 

“Little Tiger he tell me — say loco man 
come to Indian camp many moons ago," 
admitted the pleader rashly. 

“Little Tiger have a tongue like a squaw's 
— it has the legs of the wind," frowned the 
father. 

“But it can do no harm for him to guide me 
to the shack," argued Drake dropping the 
pigeon English into which the boys fell 
naturally in conversation with these Seminoles. 
“If the chief. Brown Tiger, will not give 
permission for Little Tiger to guide me, will 
he point out to me the trail, if there is one, 
and tell me the signs by which I may follow 
it?" 

“White boy no can 'member Indian sign," 
put in old Josie Billie. 

“Will the big chief listen?" said Drake. 
“He knows the small cypress swamp, where 
there is a bird-rookery in which the bad white 


[261] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


man, or men, killed all ‘de littly white birds’ 
yesterday — and where we found Little 
Tiger 

‘‘Ugh — um!” The venerable big chief 
nodded. 

“I — white scout — have only seen that 
swamp once,” said Drake, “but I can tell the 
chief all about it. It is on the north side of a 
pine-hammock, on the skirts of which there 
are some pop-ash trees and one cabbage 
palmetto. In the swamp itself are four 
young cypresses growing among the mangrove 
bushes, one already has the gray ‘ knees ’ of the 
older cypress-tree, with the second, the trunk 
has the cloven hoof of a deer — about the 
others, on the south side, the swamp-mud 
comes right up.” 

“Ugh ! De white scout good scout ojus — 
heap good scout,” grunted buck-skinned Josie 
Billie. 

“Well! will the chiefs tell me, now, the 
signs by which, having crossed the ford,” 
Drake nodded towards a dry fording-place 
in the soft dark slough, ‘and gone in among 
the big, big trees, the tall sky-scrapers reaching, 
r-reaching to the moon — ’’ he laughed un- 

[ 262 ] 


THE CHIEFS 


steadily — “of the Big Cypress swamp, I 
may find the — the lonely shack of the white 
man who is loco?*' 

Hal-wuk! It is ba-ad — heap bad," re- 
plied the big chief. “White man he no want 
see 'em ; angry at white man heap too much ; 
mebbe, mebbe kill him." 

“I'll take my chances on that," twinkled 
Drake with a glance at his rifle, propped 
against a tree. 

Then, again, he looked appealingly at 
Brown Tiger — the life of whose son he had 
saved. 

But the latter's features were stolid. He 
would not go against the big chief. 

It was at that moment that the boy-pro- 
phet's cloak — the prophet's inspiration — 
seemed to descend upon the shoulders of the 
young adventurer. 

Whirling, he seized the yellow-haired Was- 
trel by his shoulders, and spun him up in front 
of him, with a rapidity which turned the 
tenderfoot almost purple in the face. 

“Will Josie Billie, big chief, and Brown 
Tiger look — look long — upon the face of 
this boy — and upon this picture, this picture 

[ 263 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 

of a head which was found in his father's 
pocket — his father to whom has come the 
Big Sleep ; and then — then will they say 
whether Little Tiger may guide this boy and 
me to the shack of the lonely white man who 
— who grieved so over a wrong done to the 
Indians, that he is loco?" 

Little white sparks were coming and going 
in the gray-green eyes of the adventurer now. 
He shot his last arrow — straight into the 
heart of Life. 

“I think, maybe, the Great Spirit wills it,'* 
he said. 

Just a little play of light and shade crossed 
the imperturbable faces of the hunting chiefs. 
For a moment they looked ghost-ridden, as 
Little Tiger had been. 

Then old Josie Billie spoke, handing back 
the fragment of a photograph. 

“If the Great Spirit wills it — it is well — 
ojus" said the Seminole big chief. 


[264] 


CHAPTER XXIV 


The Motto in Seminole 

I T was a strange send-off — an exciting 
start. 

Dixie was calling musically through a 
“yelper” formed of the small hollow wing- 
bone of a turkey-hen, imitating the hen’s own 
plaintive call, to win an old gobbler from his 
perch at daybreak, when the scouts set out; 
the Redhead who, alone, could get permission 
from the chiefs to learn the secret of that Wild 
Man’s shack — together with the Wastrel 
and Little Tiger. 

Drake had sat up late into the night, dis- 
cussing the expedition with the Scoutmaster. 

“I ’ve been dumb as a stockfish so far as 
saying anything to the others, Deanie and 
Rev, about what I expected might — might 
come of this trip into the hear-rt of the Big 
Cypress,’’ said the hero of the “obstinacy and 

[265] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


red hair.” “There — there’s SO little to go 
just the fact of a waif’s being a nature 
shark and — and the look in the eyes of a 
picture he has, over which — over which I Ve 
pored night and day.” 

“Yes, I know how the thing has taken pos- 
session of you — you ’re the sort to go at life 
full tilt,” smiled the Scoutmaster. 

But the Rev — Sharron — you know his 
hazing monkey,” Drake laughed. “Gee ! I ’ll 
never forget that Hicpoochee bull. If nothing 
should come of this, he ’d be always having a 
sly ‘dig’ at me about chasing a man in the 
moon — a wild fancy — bringing the Wastrel 
down here.” 

“I know. I wish I were going with you.” 
The senior Scout Officer nodded sympatheti- 
cally. “But these Seminole chiefs are hard as 
copper — beyond a certain point you can’t 
bend them. I guess they feel, about you, 
that a Redhead isn’t quite a paleface,” 
laughingly. “Well! you’re a good shot, 
Drake — the way you knocked over that 
mocassin and the bewitched wing, across the 
dusky slough, last night, was pretty. And 
Little Tiger, at twelve, can handle a rifle about 


[266] 


THE MOTTO IN SEMINOLE 

as well as his father does. I Ve no fear for 
you. 

Nor had they any for themselves, the scouts, 
copper-skin and white, who forded the slough, 
the half-dry water-way next morning, to the 
music of Dixie's yelper. 

Beauty and the beast were awaking upon 
the gray knees of the huge cypress trees — 
morning-glory, mistletoe and snakes together ! 

Another flower there was, too, upon those 
bare, buttressing old knees, a delicate little 
orchid, whose creamy white, dotted with vivid 
green, the scouts had never seen elsewhere. 

‘‘Wow! Isn't it a peach — so rare an' 
waxy?" The Wastrel — a shining dew in 
his eyes — hovered over it like a bee. 

“Oh I come on. We 've no time for fussing 
over weeds now," snapped Drake tensely. 
“Can't you — can't you grow up and be a 
man r 

“Ha! D'you think you're one?" The 
tenderfoot reddened hotly at being reproved 
in the presence of Litte Tiger's leggings — 
then felt ready to sink into the slough with 
confusion over having cheeked his leader — 
his leader who had singled him out for a 

[267I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

mysterious daybreak expedition — this early 
in the game. 

“Don’t — don’t get fresh,’ or I’ll drop 
you in the ‘jug’ — big, black jug that has no 
bottom, as the Indians call the lake ahead,” 
Drake grinned. 

But when that dark “bonnet” lake was 
reached, all rosetted, yellow and white, with 
water-lilies, with a great, whooping crane’s 
nest, four feet across, rafting its centre, and 
there — there again was the little orchid in its 
rare green and white, smiling under its dew- 
drink, the leader’s heart gave a sudden bound 
that almost took his breath away. A bound 
of inspiration ! 

Pick pick it, kid, he said half-hoarsely 
to the tenderfoot, pointing to the nursing 
cypress knees. I 11 look out for moccasins. 
No ! not a few sprigs. A whole bunch ! Stick 
— stick it in your hat — all round it — see ?” 

But while the Wastrel did his millinery, his 
face was turning now and again, transfigured, 
to the pale, pink sky above him. 

The birds! he breathed. “Hear them!” 

Everywhere — everywhere the sky people 
were saluting daybreak. 


[268] 


THE MOTTO IN SEMINOLE 


Barred owls hooted. Burrowing owls 
stuttered- Cranes whooped and ‘‘hollered.’* 
A cardinal sang — a yellow throat too. A 
meadow lark ! Turkeys gobble-gobbled. 
Quail called — and so did a chuckwilFs 
widow. Black ducks were quacking from a 
swamp. 

“And there — there goes a night-heron, 
butting in ! Night and day meeting, by 
gracious ! This cert’nly is some musical 
morning.” 

Drake, listening breathlessly, too, ran his 
fingers through his hair excitedly. 

It seemed as if the evening and the morning 
were gloriously meeting, holding festival, 
uniting in one grand jubilant chorus. Over 
what — was it over fetters about to be 
broken, wilderness fetters, over that which 
was dead brought to life through a word which 
instinct had spoken in the quick ear of a 
scout ? 

“Me — me tell white scout how fin’ focho 
— duck, duck on nest !”' Little Tiger, panting, 
suddenly pushed aside some willow branches, 
near a thread of water ; there amid the weeds 
and grasses, not at all resenting the intrusion, 


drake and the ADVENTURERS’ CUP 

sat Mrs. Florida Dusky Duck, entirely at 
home. 

She did not trouble to leave the nest and 
her eleven eggs. But, farther on, the little 
brave of the deer-skin leggings showed another 
such nest, with nine eggs in it. 

Even at that moment, when — when heaven 
and earth seemed meeting upon his shoulders, 
Drake cribbed one for Dean’s collection. 

On past slough and “willow island” — dark 
pool — on along the main strand of the Big 
Cypress Swamp, the headquarters of the tree- 
giants, where the fiery leader stood, awed, a 
mere hop-o -my-thumb, before a green-plumed 
Titan nine feet in diameter — ninety-five feet 
to the first limb. 

Gosh ! Just so big and strange did Life 
seem to him here — life and the quest he 
was on ! 

“Me show scout, white scout, w’ere Indian 
haf ring-fire,” murmured the little brave when, 
after a “bit of hard going,” where the Wastrel 
got bogged to his waist, amid those huge bald 
cypresses, a dry spot was reached. 

There, indeed, were the charred logs spread 
out in a wide ring, with a pale core of ashes, 

[270I 


THE MOTTO IN SEMINOLE 

where otter-hunters had had their ring- 
fire. 

** Tr-racks Drake’s eye went to where 
the mud was still a little soft. 

0-shen-aw I Otter-r!” Little Tiger, kneel- 
ing, put his nose to the ground — his small eye 
a glory-hole, radiating — the wild hunter’s fire. 

“Otter-r get de ash, heap ash, on him, 
scr-ratch ojus — scratch at tree,” he gurgled, 
pointing to where the silky, short-legged otter 
had, indeed, rolled in the ashes and rubbed 
them off against the trunk of a shady cabbage- 
palm, not a dozen feet distant. “Brown 
Tiger he sell — heap otter — skin — ” 

And there the little brave broke off. 
Leveled straight at him from among the 
fallen palmetto fans strewing the ground, 
was the olive head of a great snake, stout, 
heavy, a gleam of dark diamond markings 
shading into gold, stretching off — off — oh! 
inimitably, it seemed — amid the withering, 
paper-like leaves. 

That was a moment when Little Tiger, as 
before, felt the numbness of the Big Sleep 
already upon him. He was only twelve. His 
rifle shook. But not that of the leader 1 


[271 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


Ever afterwards Drake knew that it was 
not only the merit badge for marksmanship 
the fact that he had made more than the 
required number of points, standing and 
prone — it was not the fact that he had 
knocked over a moccasin, and a bewitched 
wing, at two hundred yards, the night before ; 
it was the big work he was on that raised him 
above nervousness, steadied the shot which 
blew the rattler's head off then. 

That big work hurried him on, for day was 
broadening over all the three levels of the 
Big Cypress Swamp, the deep, dark quagmires 
of oozing mud, the slightly higher dry levels, 
and, here and there, the little wooded mounds, 
where the pop-ash grew and the pine and 
rarely the live oak. 

The birds were still calling everywhere, 
sand-hill cranes trumpeting shrilly, bringing 
a memory of that iron figure of the bird-chief 
out on the prairie, talking to a young one. 

Drake wondered where he was now — 
whether he had crept up on the marauding 
“plumers. " 

Tracks again ! And Little Tiger wriggling 
along on his stomach, studying them. 

[272] 


THE MOTTO IN SEMINOLE 


“Ugh !*' He grunted like the wind. “Heap 
big. Heap r-roun’ ! Pan-ter ! Panter! 
Dere — dere me fin’ his feets agen !” 

“Panther!” Drake’s breath was a young 
tornado now; his pulse beat as the savage 
pulse of the wilderness, indeed. “Panther — 
hunting early in the morning 1 Wow 1 I hope 
we ’ll see him — before he sees us 1” 

And then — then, in a breathless interval, 
the overpowering excitement in the leader 
hollowed out for itself a yearning side-chatinel. 

“Oh — oh I Little Tiger,” he breathed 
stealthily, “you were born a scout. What 
a Boy Scout you would make, learning the 
white brother’s motto, not to be caught 
napping — without the good medicine of your 
tribe 1 Our motto is : ‘Be Prepared,’ Little 
Tiger. Ready 1 Heap Ready ! Um-m.” 

“Be prepare’! Heap r-ready. To-neas-be- 
pee-shead!” Little Tiger crooned it softly — 
musically. 

“Ha! Does it take all that to say it in 
Seminole ? Reg’lar riv-u-let, gee ! like the 
Toke-twistor you fastened upon me? But 
would n’t it look bully on a banner ? Banner 
of the Otter Patrol!” 


[273] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


Drake was now tearing his way, rifle 
clutched — with the Wastrel close in tow — 
through a virgin jungle of ferns ten feet tall, 
of pale, aerial mosses, of outlaw rubber plants 
climbing — climbing to the very throat of 
the giant cypresses, by-and-bye to choke 
them — and reign, as rubber trees, in their 
stead. 

Through it all the foot-sole of the little 
twelve-year-old brave seemed to scent a trail. 

“Oh-h ! Little Tiger,” breathed the leader 
again, ''why not start a Boy Scout troop on 
your Reservation, in your Indian village, with 
Coffee Gopher and Gray Owl and — and those 
other kids — boys — you were telling me 
about ? Then — then if we come again — 
when we do-o come again, by fire ! — you 
would march — hunt — with the white 
brothers . . . with the scout who is a brother 
to ev-ery other scout.” 

The deep eyes of the little Seminole flashed 
above his flaming cheek-bones. 

For the first time, in him, hereditary distrust 
of the white man became a bone-dry slough, 
baked hard by brotherhood — the close and 
naked brotherhood of the wilderness. 


[274] 


THE MOTTO IN SEMINOLE 


“You-ou stick a pin there — make a note 
of that ! '' breathed Drake whimsically. 

But the pin was not yet to be stuck which 
should hold that bargain together. 

Something stepped on it — a fleeing hoof. 

There was a crashing in the jungle ahead, 
the sob of a whistling breath — wild sob of a 
creature pursued. 

“Deer!’’ breathed the Wastrel — the Was- 
trel in his flower-spiked hat. 

But the breath of the little Indian was 
sobbing, gurgling, too — long, hissing, spitting 
gurgles — pumped from a vacuum within 
him. 

He had risen upon his toes, a little drab 
giraffe, — neck craning amid the gray beards 
of moss. 

Already he had seen it. He was the first 
to see it. The long shape, drabber still, 
stretched out, cat-like, upon the limb of a tree 
ahead — the furlong of uncurling tail I 

And at the moment that he spotted it, it 
dropped, dropped from the branch into the 
jungle — through which streamed the morn- 
ing searchlight of a clearing ahead. 

Broad-nosed, snub-nosed, velvet-pawed, 

[275I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


eleven feet from frothing lip to the tip of that 
swinging tail, it was — Drake’s scalp-lock 
rose, a flambeau — it was the lithe, brown 
shape of a stalking panther ! 


[276] 


CHAPTER XXV 


The Mad King 

I T 'S after the deer!” The leader's whis- 
per rustled in the brush 

‘‘Ow-ow ! Ugh 1 Pan ter head-skin, tail- 
skin, heap money — money much get 'em — 
Little Tiger get 'im. Brown Tiger say — good 
— hunt' — '' 

The small “rubbering” giraffe had relaxed 
now — was crouching in a bow. 

Rifle in hand, the twelve-year-old Seminole, 
a coppery flame, was stalking the panther, as 
the great panther, cat-like, bounded after the 
deer. 

But Another was before Little Tiger. 
Something ipped the jungle ahead. Some- 
thing leaped forth on to the clearing. Some- 
thing swung a club, a rude cypress club, on 
high — as the first caveman might have 
swung it. 


[277] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


There was the wave of a gray beard, shaggy 
as the moss-beards overhead, the pepper-and- 
salt bush of a head thrust forward upon oaken 
shoulders, — and Drake, hard-panting, fol- 
lowed close by Little Tiger. 

For now Fate had him by the nose. 

The end had come — the end of his dream 
of months. 

He was on the heels of his man in the moon, 
stalking him, as he stalked the panther — the 
Wild Man of the Big Cypress — the naturalist 
who was “heap loco'' 

It needed not the little Indian’s uncouth, 
hissing sound to tell him. The Great Adven- 
ture was here. 

“Tight to me — Waif! S-stick ti-ight I” 
he hissed. “Whatever comes, do as I .tell 
you !” 

And the Wastrel, with the ground burning 
beneath him, his head cold, clammy cold, he 
knew not why, “stuck tight.” 

Out onto the prairie-patch they came, the 
three. 

And then even Little Tiger, twelve-year- 
old stoic, looked as if his world were being 
beaten to a pulp about him, while Drake 


[278] 



The mad naturalist was 

PANTHER OFF. 


ACTUALLY DRIVING THE 

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THE MAD KING 


saw his vision, “the thing you think you 
see when you Te half awake and half asleep’’ 
— the phantom he had been following for 
months — suddenly loom before him — a 
shaggy superman. 

“Smas-sh-man-jigger !” he e aculated — 
and the rude jabber seemed to break his teeth. 
“If — if he isn’t dr-riving off the panther 
with that club — just a bare cypress-knee ! 
But the deer — the deer ’s — done — for.” 

Yes ! already the doe’s dying cry under the 
swamp panther’s claw had rung out. 

“Too late! He’s too 1-latel’ tolled the 
scout’s heart in his ears ; and then even his 
throbbing finger-tips seemed sounding a wild 
tocsin, with his brain as bell-ringer. 

For that was happening before his eyes 
which he could not have believed possible. 
The mad naturalist was actually driving the 
panther oflF — oflF from its captured prey, 
armed only with that gray club. 

His “man in the moon” had become a mon- 
ster — a monster of nerve, at any rate — 
whose quivering shoulders curled over their 
own strength. 

Half-bare shoulders they were, in a coarse 

[279I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


and ragged shirt that hung from his body, 
like shagbark, as he bent over the dying 
doe. 

“R-rough — rough on the panther, 
though!” Drake heard his own voice gibbe - 
ing automatically. 

“Ugh! Me geta pan ter head-skin, feet- 
skin now-ow.” Little Tiger, a stiffened flame, 
was stealing off towards adjoining brush, 
whither the bluffed wild beast — a large brute, 
too, ten or eleven feet from its short, broad 
nose to the tip of its baffled tail — had snarl- 
ingly retreated. 

“No-o — you don* 1 1 I — want — you!” 

With the club of his voice Drake halted the 
little hunter — halted him, snarling too. 

“Go — go forward and speak to him** he 
said. “He knows you-u. Little Tiger.” 

For the fiery heart of the leader was saying 
to him : 

“This is the moment. Life’s Big Moment. 
It may be now — or never ! 

“I ’1 keep an eye on the panther,” he added 
insanely. 

But the panther had an eye on safety. One 
of a scattered remnant, deep in his heart a 


[ 280] 


THE MAD KING 


deadly fear of man, he left even his rightful 
breakfast, for the present. 

Stalking on tiptoe, mindful that Brown 
Tiger had bidden him obey the white scout, 
the little brave stole forward, until, with an 
Indian’s quick intuition, he stood behind, not 
beside, the wild figure stroking the doe — and 
said something in the flowing, musical Semi- 
nole tongue. 

The figure raised itself. Turned. Wild eyes 
burned from under the bush of hair, like 
slough lightning. 

And then — then the white scout, he pa- 
tient adventurer, knew that his man in the 
moon was no phantom, as related to that other 
boyish life beside him. 

The eyes were the eyes of the picture which 
he had snatched from the young gale’s pocket 
on that long-ago day of the sand-sailer race, 
when the wind and he had competed as to who 
should corner Fate. 

“Go-o forward you now — and speak to 
him!” he said very gently, ‘‘Wha-at! You 
can’t?” shoving he tenderfoot out, with a 
touch that blistered. '‘Gee! if you ‘cave’ now, 
I ’ll kill you. What d’ you suppose I lugged 

[281 ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


you he-ere for — half the way on my back — 
but for-r this 

Slowly, then, the waif of the embankment 
stole forward, in his orchid-decked scout hat. 
A faint, waxen perfume stepped before him on 
the morning breeze. 

The hermit threw back his head. His eye — 
gray blue — on which the whole wilderness 
was vaguely painted, did not drop upon the 
white face before him under the broad hat — 
white as never had been the face of boy before, 
it seemed. 

The glance stopped short — stopped short, 
for the moment, at the leather hatband, the 
flowery, green and white spikes. 

His hands clutched his head, in an effort to 
speak. 

‘*The — the Cranichis . . . Cran-i-chis 
m-mul . . The rest of the Latin name 
trailed away into the den of a voice that was 
wilder than any sound Drake had heard yet in 
the Big Cypres . “Or-r-chid r-rare!” um- 
blingly. “F-found on-ly on cypress-knees — 
he-ere!'* in a low, brutish rumble that hardly 
held water as human speech. “I — I bought 
— no — one — " 


[282] 


THE MAD KING 


But there the wild eyes of the man who was 
loco dropped from the flower to the startingly 
white face beneath — the man whose mania 
it was that he could not bear to look upon a 
paleface. 

He raised his club-arm in horror. He backed 
away. A roar burst from him. 

“Stay up: s-stay up-p, kid” hissed Drake. 
“He — he shan’t touch you. This-s is why 
we ’re here ! ” 

And now — now — it seemed as if the very 
knees of the cypress-trees were knocking to- 
gether at the look upon the face of the man 
who had a mosquito in the salt-box. 

It was stinging him all over now — that was 
plain, as he stalked forward a step. And all 
creation hung, breathless, upon the question 
as to whether, or not, there was any salt left in 
the box. 

Any sanity under the vague tanned forehead 
— the working, gaping jaws ! 

If it was there, the flower would find it. For 
his eye went to the orchid again. It, alone, 
would have the power to draw salt out of the 
shock — connect the naturalist’s dead self with 
the withered arm of the life he led day by day. 


[283] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


But looking at it in the hat of another — a 
boy who had his own eyes — slowly, mysteri- 
ously, deep down in the heart of things, the 
connection formed. 

He advanced, yet, a step. And there was 
silence. 

No sound but the sob of the dying doe ! 

Then, out of the silence, moved by the sob, 
came the voice that was hardly human again 

— terribly wild and doubting — but with no 
savagery in it. 

“Neff-ff!’" it hurled gropingly. “Neff!” 

And the cypresses trembled to their snake- 
gartered knees, as they heard. For it was a 
mighty moment ! The man whom Nature had 
once taken by the hand and made him king 
over them — over the wild things that dwelt 
in their shadow — because of his knowledge, 
catching dizzily at a rocking throne 1 

Reason's throne — memory's throne — again I 

“Speak to him, kid,” said the scout leader; 
and his voice borrowed the sob of the deer's 

— life beginning where life left off. “Remem- 
ber — I'm back of you 1” 

“My name is Neff,” faltered the boy with 
the face of a “ !ong white. ” “Neff-ff Hare.” 


[284] 


THE MAD KING 


“ No-o — it is n't ! " Now it was suddenly a 
human shriek, still colored by the cypresses, as 
it were — a shriek almost as human as that of 
Polly in the woods. 

‘‘It 's — oh, my God ! what is it Nebu- 
chadnezzar's hands — hands of a mad king — 
clutched his head again, groped, bushed, in the 
hammock of his gray hair. “It — it's Sal- 
something — Sal-Sal-Saltonstall. Tha-at 's it. 
You 're my son. My — little — son. Oh ! 
I — I 've seen you, of late, as you are now. 
But how — how — " 

Drake, the adventurer, knew that his face 
was wet. Not tears, but the dew of Life was 
streaming down it — the reek of Life's strange 
happenings. 

Something was now taking place before his 
eyes, something which linked him with that 
daybreak on the Indian River, when moon- 
light melted into dawn and all the valleys were 
mist — when the Wastrel wailed that he was 
the kid who did n't even know his own mon- 
arch — his own name. 

Moonlight was mating with dawn now in the 
being of the man before him. Still all the val- 
leys were mist. 


[285] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“He is your little son — your grandson, I 
guess ; it 's all the same. Oh-h ! I Ve known 
it all the time, ever — ever since the school 
brought him along, almost — though how, by 
gracious ! I don’t know,” 

Was it the dew and fire of Life — the won- 
der at Life — upon the face of the tall scout 
who now stepped forward, or the unkempt 
flame of the hair tumbling over it, that blinded 
the unhinged hermit to the fact that he was 
actually looking upon the face of a white man 
— and not dying of the shock. 

Brown Tiger had built much upon the genial 
blaze of that mophead, untrimmed for a 
month, to soften the jar of a paleface. 

I I suppose there are still some gaps to be 
filled out, but none but a foo! would doubt the 
close relationship.” Drake’s heels lashed out 
victoriously. “You — you’re as alike as 
palm-scrub and pa metto.” He looked from 
the shivering Amber Jack to the uncouth 
figure in buckskin breeches beside him. “Or 
or you will be, Mister,” genially, “when 
you come out from behind those bushes ! 

“But now — now ” — craftily — “ I ’d take 
him by the hand, your little son — and pro- 

[286] 


THE MAD KING 


tect him, if I were you ! Out here, there are 
men who would abuse him — kidnap him. . . . 
You — you get hold of his claw, kid, and — 
and mush him a little !” 

Was it the familiar, homely slang of the 
school, or the fi m-screen, that nerved the 
Wastrel to obey the last order — but scarcely 
had his cold fingers touched the horny ones of 
the Wild Man when there was a rending of 
bushes in the cypress swamp near. 

Through towering ferns and choking rubber- 
plants two figures crashed forth onto the little 
oasis. 

Drake's hold stiffened convulsively upon his 
rifle. Was — was it a case of '‘Talk of the 
Evil One — and at your elbow he is Had 
his working n of kidnappers as a "nifty" ruse 
conjured outlaws up about him ? 

His eyes retreated into his head as he found 
himself looking into the face of Brown Tiger — 
and then of Wulf, the bird-chief. 

The latter wore a grim, throw-up-your- 
hands look. His automatic was gr mly lev- 
eled. 

At sight of the strange group — the torn 
deer — he fell back 


[287I 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“Gosh! I thought I had ’em/’ he ejacu- 
lated. ‘‘Never mind ! I ’m on to their where- 
abouts now, those p’ume-hunters. ’ Know 
where it is, just a little to the southwest of the 
swamp there, in ’mong the thickest mangrove 
bushes and cypresses. Old Indian camp 1 I ’m 
going to take possession and give ’em a sur- 
prise party. Now 1 what are you making 
tracks for ? ’ Cause I ’m a white man, eh ?” 

Wulf suddenly made Drake feel “kiln- 
dried” by seizing the Wild Man by the arm as 
the latter, remember ng his hugged mania, 
was pawing the ground as if to steal away. 

“Well 1 I ’d stick by these white men — as 
well as by the Indians who are 'white’ too — 
if you don’t want to set the table or the buz- 
zards,” went on Warden Wulf, actually shak- 
ing the half-bare arm, using his low voice as a 
club upon the misanthrope, even as the nat- 
uralist had used it on the panther. “That ’s 
what you ’ll be doing, if you stay here alone. 
Brown Tiger, here, out after otter — still- 
hunting — worm ng his way through bushes, 
heard those fellows who have been shooting 
out rookeries, talk of shooting up your shack, 
too, stealing what you have in your clothes — 


THE MAD KING 


rags, rather — the money you Te reported to 
have brought with you, an' feeding your mis- 
guided body to the buzzards. He was slipping 
on here to warn you, and to look after these 
boys whom he had given permission to come — 
when — when he ran into me." 

Strange sounds were in the air now. The 
Wild Man was grunting, softly bellowing, 
sorely bellowing, like the hooked alligator. 

“And, by gracious! if I don't mistake, 
there 's a ‘barker' of your own blood here, too, 
you old 'gator," chuckled Wulf. “How about 
looking after him, if you don't mind being 
skinned, yourself?" 

The naturalist — the crank of the Big Cy- 
press — shook and shrank, crumbled inward, 
it seemed, as the rags of his delusion slipped 
from him. 

“You 've played Wild Man long enough. 
How about plain man now for a spell ?" said 
the bird-chief sarcastically, and put him to- 
gether again with a shake. 


[289] 


CHAPTER XXVI 
A Grim Surprise Party 

I T was the strangest hour for a Maunsert 
senior, enough, almost, to make him 
doubt his identity and that his adventures 
in the Big Cypress, had culminated in this, as 
he lay, ambushed, in an old Indian camp of 
otter-hunters — a wide, square shelter sup- 
ported by four poles and covered with the 
broad fans, or leaves, of the saw-palmetto, 
brown as parchment. 

The wind-mantle of the big cypresses was 
around him. It drew a calm-belt about the 
ancient camp, through which now and again, 
a gust would break and spar with the parch- 
menty thatch until it crackled — ranted — 
telling the fiercest of outlaw tales. 

‘H — I Ve been working on these plume- 
hunters for a smart while now,'' said Wulf, 

f 290] 


A GRIM SURPRISE PARTY 


“ever since you ran across me on the prairie, 
conversing with a young sand-hill crane. So 
has the warden of this region. We Ve camped 
without fire or light. Not until to-day did 
I get on to their trail, through an Indian scout. 
But that feather-tract gives them away.*' 

He pointed to some scattered plumes in a 
hoarding corner — among them as Drake 
saw, the rare plumage of a “Pink," the peach- 
blossom among birds — the roseate spoonbill, 
which they had watched upon the Inlet on the 
day that the bird-man came down. 

“It *s a pretty daring gang of ‘ plumers,* I 
guess — and wanted, some of them — for 
much worse crimes than poaching; one who 
has been hiding out here for years — and at 
long intervals roaming the country — for 
shooting up a family, or part of it. Look at 
what they were plotting about him." 

He nodded now, the bird-chief, at the wild, 
figure of the naturalist squatting on some 
rubbish in another corner, his wide, moonstruck 
eyes shining out of the hammock of gray 
hair upon a pale-faced tenderfoot, towards 
whom he now and again made a savage 
movement of defence or tenderness — which. 


[ 291 ] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


as quickly, set the flower-decked Wastrel 
recoiling towards Drake. 

“ You can use your shooting-iron, if neces- 
sary, on the occasion of this surprise party, eh, 
boy?'' said the warden-in-chief again, looking 
down upon the red-haired, heavily panting 
adventurer beside him. “A smart chance of 
a fight, you know, unless the desperadoes — 
maybe one, maybe a sprinkling — have only 
their shot-guns ! Brown Tiger has his rifle, 
too. 

Yes, the latter had taken the Winchester 
from Little Tiger, much to the small brave's 
disgust, as he lay stretched out, face down- 
ward, upon the sod-floor of the camp, his 
ferret-like eyes tracing an intricate pattern of 
many otter tracks, with those of big bear and 
panther, that crossed and re-crossed upon 
the bed of a dried-up slough winding through 
the mangrove bushes, without. 

Once he glanced backward, where the 
decorative, deer-skin thongs fell over his 
beaded moccasin — and over a snake-scar on 
his ankle. ‘‘White scout haf good medicine," 
he muttered reminiscently. “ To-neas~be-pee- 
sheas I Be prepare' ! — Ready — ready ojus I 


[292] 


A GRIM SURPRISE PARTY 


To-neas-be-pee-sheas ! Over and over, at 
intervals, those dusky lips crooned it, as if it 
were a charm, a charm of brotherhood. 

‘‘Gosh! the motto does sound great — 
flowing — in Seminole,’’ remarked Drake, to 
mother earth. 

Mother Earth’s answering remark was 
footsteps. Foot-steps swishing among the 
tracks upon the miry slough-bed. 

The surprise party was on — a surprise to 
hit the very bull’s eye of the wilderness. 

“Throw up your hands; I have you 
covered,” said Wulf, streaking to his feet, to 
confront a strong man swinging a bag, who 
stumbled through the broad entrance almost 
into his arms. 

In the background the Wastrel froze ; it was 
his pal and tempter for a year — the man who 
had sweated under a parrot’s jeers. 

Drake, the peace scout, was covering the 
figure behind him, that of a second “plumer” 
whose ugly jaw stuck out, whose hair, hazel, 
not jet-black now, showed sooty in patches 
where it had once been dyed — bringing to 
the petrified tenderfoot the memory of an 
owl’s night on a train — of how he had heard 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 

these two discuss another game besides that 
of feathers, of making it a grab game keeping 
the kid out — “settling the old un with a blue 
pill/^ 

He made his first voluntary movement 
towards the hairy monster of his own blood, 
understanding what that meant now. 

The Indian was silent as a striping shadow, 
but beside the grimness of his “covering” 
aspect the panther would have been a poodle. 

“Put down your guns. Let’s see what 
you have with you !” said the warden. 

“Ha! Sorrowful tale — three months in 
jail — I suppose!” brazened out Dyke — 
flippantly complying. 

“More than that for your tortoise-shell 
pal!” Wulf sarcastically eyed the other 
miscreant’s head. “A posse out after him. 
’T will be along here just as soon as the Indian 
climbs a cypress and makes a signal.” 

The pal made a desperate movement to- 
wards his belt. But Drake had him closely 
covered. 

“Quit that — or I start shooting,” said the 
warden, disarming the outlaw, himself. 

“And — and who's that? Why! the kid 

[294] 


A GRIM SURPRISE PARTY 


I ‘babied/ trotting him around with me for a 
whole year, dancing attendance upon his 
funny ‘curves,''' gasped Dyke, the minor 
lawbreaker. “ Has he been snitching — now ? " 

“He has told me nothing, except about 
his mailing some boxes on the Inlet," was 
Boyd Wulf's answer. “That I did get out 
of him." 

“I was bringing him down here with me 
because — because I had a hunch, more than 
a hunch, that he was a chip of that addled 
old block." Dyke pointed excitedly from 
the Wastrel to the nature wizard. “Just 
before we left Virginny I ran on to a bloke, 
strangely enough, who had once known his 
father ; he told me how the father — seems as 
if it must have been his dad — pulled oft a 
game in New York which obliged him to 
change his name and ‘beat it' to another 
city — all cleaned out — " 

“Yes," gasped a tenderfoot, as if through a 
stifling gag. “Ye-es!" 

“An' about an old gran'father, mad 's a 
March hare, who had his lair. ... So you 
caught him alive, oh ! I did n't tell the kid 
outright, because — " 


[295] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


“Well ! instead, you can tell your good 
deeds to the authorities over at Fort Myers, 
when they dive into your past, and get what 
leniency you can/' So Wulf interrupted im. 
“Now for the stuff you've got! More 
aigrette plumes ?" 

The old camp wore a strange feathering 
when, an hour later, a posse entered it, 
together with the local game warden of the 
Big Cypress. 

“Well 1 you leave here with a plume in your 
cap, r-right smart plume, too, for catching 
that old nature wiz' alive — money-wad an' 
all, I reckon!" said Wulf, preparing to de- 
part with his prisoners. “And now I 've a 
word to say to you ! " He stepped from the 
congratulated Drake up before the once 
famous naturalist. “I never thought you 
were as ' loco ' as you thought you were ; only 
— only mighty trifling ! Just because your 
son went back on you and another white man 
spilled the beans, causing sad trouble among 
the Indians, you spilled 'em worse, lived the 
life of a wild bear, out here, leaving that boy 
of your — own — blood — " 

“I — d-did n't — know," wheezed the 


[296] 


A GRIM SURPRISE PARTY 


rusty voice, compared to which Polly’s was 
stump oratory. 

“Ha! You know now. An’ having played 
Wild Man ‘to the queen’s taste,’ how about 
playing the man for a spell ? It ’s not too 
late. If it had n’t been for that fiery red- 
head — To-ke . . . whew 1 what ’s that 
‘sprained’ name the Indians have hung upon 
him ?” 

It was just a gasp of laughter with which 
Wulf paused. 

But it was the first laugh of a white man 
which the naturalist had heard in ten years. 

Deep down in him it reverberated in an 
astonished grunt. Agony shook him — and 
awakening. 

The valleys were full of mist still — the 
valleys within — but into them stole, oh 1 
miracle, the faintest ray of sunlight. 

Behind those uncouth bushes, lo I moonlight 
had become dawn. 


[297] 


CHAPTER XXVII 


The Lion’s Prize 

I N the Megaron, or big hall, the Prize 
Speaking contest was over. 

Senior after senior had mounted the 
platform, sacred to seniors alone, which no 
lower form boy might tread, with a touch of 
regret softening the tiptoe of expectation, — 
the youth’s outlook on life — for he was tread- 
ing a quarter-deck which would know him no 
more. 

A quarter-deck on which he had debated and 
dramatized, gone through many of the battles 
of his boarding-school life. 

A platform associated with his recreations 
too, the yarn spun, the song sung in the fall 
firelight, around the huge fireplace, and in late 
spring, when every story had a string which 
drew it back to the school’s winter semester in 
the south. 

For the stately, oak-paneled, oak-raftered 
[298] 


THE LION’S PRIZE 


Megaron, the great hall eighty feet long and 
fifty wide, was the center of the school-build- 
ings occupied by Maunsert Academy in the 
north, on a windy hill of Massachusetts. 

And the verdict of each “prize speaker,” as 
he mounted the quarter-deck for his last wordy 
fray, was : 

“Well, North and South, it was a great old 
Life!” 

The excitement of knowing that it was over, 
its short, four-year span melting into the great, 
unknown stretch, the long traverse beyond, 
lent insight, fire, feeling to the training and 
skill with which Maunsert seniors, in this con- 
test, all but the last to take place here, de- 
claimed the thoughts or feats of men who had 
acquitted themselves nobly upon life's long 
“carry.” 

The records of some such were about them. 
On the oaken panels of the big hall were re- 
corded the names of school alumni who had 
left, or were leaving, footsteps that could 
scarcely be wiped out. 

With these mingled the burnished flame of 
athletic trophies — some won by their own 
contemporaries. 


[ 299 1 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


And above all, backing all, hung the sacred 
Service Flags, speaking of those who had gone 
forth before them and taken part in the 
world’s Greatest Adventure for equality — 
for freedom. 

With such stimulus the graduating seniors 
outdid themselves in the declamations for a 
prize. Riches of oratory, of humor — of emo- 
tion — from the dialect of the newly arrived 
immigrant to the eloquence of the statesman 
and the dry-eyed reticence of the father who 
saw his only son march off, left the audience 
anything but dry-eyed — and the judges in 
an embarassing strait. 

But, after all, this was but painting the lily 
— painting Life. 

Life itself spoke. Life itself pulsed in the 
beings of boys through whom it had found 
original and daring expression, when the 
second contest of the evening came — the 
contest for the Adventurers’ Cup. 

A novel competition in school annals, as the 
Club which donated the prize was fire-new, 
built of lion-hearts who had each had five 
clean adventures in the open ! 

According to the wording of the Adventurer 


THE LION’S PRIZE 


who offered the Cup, it was to go to the senior 
who could tell the best story of Life, humorous, 
thrilling or pathetic, in which he, himself, had 
figured, preferably an outdoor adventure — 
and tell it in the best way. 

Never before had any of the many gilded 
cups offered by various clubs and brother- 
hoods of alumni, kindled such a keen flame of 
excitement among the three societies of the 
school, the Sigma Zeta Kappa, the Agora, the 
Locaridian, as to who should carry it off. 

The prize itself was fire-new. And only 
those tried in the fire could win it. 

The Zeta Kappa strong-hearts held their 
breaths as Wade, their representative, Wade 
who had held them spellbound on early May 
afternoons with his tales of tarpon-fishing in 
the Gulf, mounted the rostrum. 

He lived it all over again, did Wade, the 
leaving his father’s yacht at dawn when the 
Gulf of Mexico blossomed like a rose, the 
swarthy face of his guide, his boatmen, the 
swivel-chair in which he could, lightning-like, 
whirl to play the fish, the dawn-fresh spray in 
his face ! The strike ! The strike, when the 
silver king, a “moody” fish, which had been 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


sportively rolling and playing, awoke to 
hunger and hit the hook with a bang. 

And then — then the playing him with the 
heavy bamboo rod, the shrieking fathoms of 
tense line ! The feeling of being within two 
handspans of the sky in the exultation of 
struggle with a fish-god who dived, a sub- 
marine, and soared, an aeroplane — along a 
bewildering air-lane of rainbows. 

The seven-foot, silvery tarpon-king ! 

Of the slow weakening, long soundings, the 
wag of the tired tarpon-head, the losing battle 
with rod and reel, the last leap — last failing 
air-race — the surrender ! 

Wade told it all — and every man in the 
audience — man and boy — fished with him, 
triumphed with him. 

He showed the trophy, the iridescent, gem- 
like tarpon-scale. And every boy coveted it. 

“A good angling adventure — and mighty 
well-told said one of the judges to another. 

'‘Yes ! but with a trifle too much of Wade in 
it,” was the dry reply. 

Others — other rich men’s sons of the grad- 
uating class — told of adventure de luxe, too 

[302] 


THE LION^S PRIZE 


— none the less valiant adventure for that — 
but needing to be shod with dollar bills. 

One of sword-fishing, on a yacht cruise off 
the Bahamas. Another of a thrilling flight by 
passenger aeroplane across Mexico. 

It seemed as if experience dragged its wild 
wings, drooped a little, when it came down to 
a harsh tale of an alligator-hunt, with gooser- 
rod and ‘‘ready rouster'' out on a mud-holed 
prairie of one of the three lone levels of the 
Big Cypress region. 

Dean told it well — and nobody could say 
there was much of Dean in it. There was 
more of the surprised pig. 

So it was with the Rev's description of 
photographing a beach bear — shaggy egg- 
eater — by searchlight. 

Self seemed to have been shed through the 
sweating pores which battled as primitive man 
battled — or almost so — to empire at the 
heart of the Big Cypress. 

But it was a Redhead who laid bare that 
heart — who cleft Life's heart at the same 
time, so that his adventure seemed to flow 
straight out of that, like a rill from a rock ! 

So that his hearers were hardly conscious of 


[303] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS* CUP 


the fire-hollowed channel through which it 
flowed ! 

It was a Redhead — Toke-is-kee-tus-chee — 
at this moment the little river of his Seminole 
name seemed to ripple round him, island him 
off with his heart-beats — who told of a 
moment in Nature's Megaron : the hall of the 
Big Cypress. 

Of a mild doe felled by the swamp-panther's 
claw and a wild arm which drove that panther 
off — armed only with a cypress club. 

Of physical strength — in solitude grown 
to a monstrous weed — and mental vigor all 
run to seed in the breast of a mad naturalist 
— a Wild Man of the swamp. 

Of a little flower, orchid rare — America's 
rarest orchid — found only on gray knees of 
the cypress-trees in this core of the wilder- 
ness, which struck some chord, deep down — 
a jealous chord — as it peeped from the hat- 
band of a boy ; a boy with the mad king's 
eyes. 

And then of great trees trembling to their 
snake-gartered knees, of heart-quakes such as 
had not been before, would never be again, 
it seemed, as the spectre of a human voice 

[304] 


THE LION’S PRIZE 


rocked upon a son’s name — which was, also, 
that of a grandson ! Of a boy in whose heart 
Nature had set the selfsame love of her as 
beat in that wild frame under the “bushes.” 

Of the sob of a dying doe — the tear in the 
stricken deer’s eye that wept a new life in. 

Of moonlight mating with dawn — although 
all within was mist and cloud-rack in the 
breast of a gorgon Wild Man. 

Of — of that which was dead come to life 
again ! That which was lost found ! 

The flame of that finding was in the scout’s 
voice, the wonder of Life, an awe of it — a 
reverence — before which all the pyrotechnics 
of his own warm personality shrank, belittled, 
out of sight. 

“There — there goes the Cup,” said an ad- 
venturer-judge. 

“ It goes to Life itself. That ’s how I see it,” 
awarded another — whose eyes were wet- 

“And to the Adventurer who has served 
Life!” decreed a third. 

It needed not the grim dramatics of a sur- 
prise party to “plumers” at the very bull’s 
eye of the wilderness. 

For all knew the end. All had heard of a 


[305] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS^ CUP 


crack-brained naturalist dynamited out of his 
delusions, induced to accompany the scouts 
— among them the boy with his son's face — 
to their camp. 

There the Scoutmaster, who in the war had 
touched the heights and depths of living, had 
taken him in hand, shown him how, because of 
old wrongs, while the world was going through 
its greatest struggle, he had skulked, a rat, 
upon the skirts of life. 

Cowed and submissive, he had begun to 
understand. Shorn of his insignia of a Wild 
Man, his hairy bushes, by the hand of a squaw. 
Brown Tiger's squaw who, with others, had 
followed her brave up to the Big Cypress for 
the spring outing, the otter-hunt, he had hiked 
beside his grandson out to the canal which 
connected with civilization. 

Brown Tiger, engaged by the Scoutmaster, 
had journeyed as chaperon, to keep him in 
countenance — Little Tiger, too, with a skin 
or two and a couple of baby alligators to sell 
as curios at Palm Beach. 

There the canoes were shipped north. And 
the adventurers, like their captive, shorn of 
their bushes — with the moustache bourgeon- 

[306] 


THE LION’S PRIZE 


ing upon each manly lip — had themselves 
taken the train for Daytona. 

Then — then back along that world-famed 
beach to sanctuary and the society of the 
soldier heron — and preparations for the 
school's coming north ! 

At the time of this tel’ ing of his capture 
upon a June night the Nature wizard had 
found sanctuary, too, was in a sanatorium, 
under skilful treatment — hitting the trail 
for normal life again. 

Means for resuming it were not lacking. 

In the rags which Brown Tiger had taken 
from him, replacing them with tunic and leg- 
gings, was found his ‘"money-wad," little de- 
pleted in ten years, still some big bills and 
bonds of a higher denomination — in the ser- 
vices which the Indians had rendered the man 
who was loco, no Seminole had ever cheated 
or stolen from him. 

As Drake said. Little Tiger would make an 
unsullied scout. 

The way was open for the Wastrel, that 
waif of a February day and an embankment, 
to turn all his thoughts to study, follow out 
the “curves" for which Nature shaped him — 


[307] 


DRAKE AND THE ADVENTURERS’ CUP 


and become a greater naturalist than his 
grandfather. 

The gateway was wide for all — the gate- 
way of a man’s life — at once garlanded and 
lightly grief-gnawed : so felt the seniors of the 
graduating class who assembled for the pres- 
entation of diplomas and the award of prizes 
on the day following the adventurous competi- 
tion in the big hall of the Megaron. 

This cross-blend of feeling colored the voice 
of the Rev as the bull-hazer of Hicpoochee 
Lake delivered the Latin Salutatory with the 
face of a seer — an oration that held water in 
the moisture of his eye as it turned to the 
Headmaster in the chair, the man of whom the 
Scoutmaster had said that when he was un- 
selfishly promoting the interests of a boy, then 
his blue eyes sparkled and his beard grew. 

That delicate little goatee was sun-bright 
this morning, but the eye was moisture-laden, 
too. 

Each year the Headmaster faced the world 
anew with the youth he graduated. And he 
had seen strange things with this class. 

The wonder of Life, its mysterious majesty, 
was in his voice, as it had been in the story- 


THE LION^S PRIZE 


teller's last night, when he summoned a Red- 
head to the platform and placed in his hands 
the splendid Cup donated by the Adventurers' 
Club. 

“This prize is accompanied, as you know, 
by a scholarship," he said, “which will defray 
the expenses of the recipient's first two years 
in college, provided the Cup-winner has, in 
his school record, joined to adventure achieve- 
ment : achievement along all three lines of 
study, athletics — and character. This record 
is yours, Drake. As you have served Life — 
true scout and adventurer — with insight and 
pluck, in the past, so may you serve it in 
future : 

“ While God bends above you his covenant arch, 
And before you lies waiting the world!” 


[309] 



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